Once Bitten, Twice the Spy
by Ryuusquall
Summary: On Alex's 'last ever mission', something terrible happens to him. Not something he will die of, but how can he live with what he has now become? Where does he go from here, now that hes no longer quite human anymore?
1. The Beginning of the End

**Hello all, and welcome to my second serious Alex Rider fanfiction. **

**Unlike with A Bad Idea, in which I only had a vague idea of what was going to happen, I've pretty much decided on everything for this fanfiction. Things might change of course if I come up with a better idea or if someone else recommends something better, but at least you know that there's actually a plan here! XD**

**Disclaimer: I've got a gun to his head here but Mr. Horrowitz still won't give me ownership of the Alex Rider series…he's a tough one, this guy! **

**He might not be willing to give up the rights to save his life, but there are worse things then death…Mwahahahaha! I shall keep on trying to find his worst fear, don't worry…those rights will be mine!**

The beginning of the End

There was one reason Alex was back here again, and one only. Or at least, that was what Alex kept telling himself.

"_This is the last time your employment will be required…"_

Mr. Crawley's words kept echoing in his mind. It couldn't possibly be true, could it? What would make them decide to actually leave him alone after all this time?

Alex could just about make himself believe that finding out would justify him returning to the 'bank', once more.

Of course, it might just be a ploy to get Alex there so they could issue him with this one last mission. Or they could always simply claim that he had misheard the words or made them up. Who would he be able to complain to anyway if they went back on what Mr. Crawley had said? It wasn't as though anyone would believe him…

But there was always a chance, no matter how slim, that they would be true to their words for once and finally allow him to return to some semblance of a normal teenager's life.

"Mr. Blunt will see you now, Mr. Rider." The lady sitting behind the smart wooden secretaries' desk suddenly said in a polite voice, empty of emotion.

Alex rose from the dark leather chair he had been waiting in for the last ten minutes and followed the secretary through the maze of bullet-proof, glass fronted offices.

He could find his way there by himself though. He had always been good at taking note of where he was going and learning how to navigate himself round places.

All around Alex were the normal sounds and goings on you would expect to see and hear in a normal office, the loud click of the receptionist's shoes, photocopiers doing their jobs, phones ringing and people rushing past with wads of documents held tight against their chests. Even this close to MI6's heart, it still kept up the façade of a normal work place. But of course, as well as talking about top-secret information, normal things really did have to happen here. Someone had to go make the tea and coffee after all.

And all the really important stuff would be hidden away in bomb-proof, window-less, locked rooms.

A few moments later the door he had been waiting to see appear around the corner was opened by the secretary. She informed the occupants of the room beyond that 'Mr. Rider' had arrived and then left, giving Alex a quick glance as she passed him, tapping out a hurried tattoo with her black high heels as she stalked away. She didn't like seeing Alex there. It wasn't her job to ask questions, but she couldn't help wondering why a teenager kept coming back here, to the head-quarters of MI6. It unnerved her.

Alex stepped into Mr. Blunt's office, closing the door behind himself with a 'snick'.

"Ah, Alex. How nice of you to join us." Mr. Blunt said without looking up from a typed-up report he was riffling through. Alex fought back the urge to reply scathingly. He made it sound as though Alex had randomly decided to visit at what was a rather awkward time; instead he merely nodded, though since Mr. Blunt wasn't actually looking at him, he probably didn't even notice.

Alex briefly caught the eye of Mrs. Jones, who was, as always, standing behind Mr. Blunt, to one side and sucking on a peppermint sweet. She gave him what she probably thought was a reassuring smile, but it didn't quite have the right effect on Alex. If Tulip Jones felt the need to try and reassure him, things really must be bad. And as hard as he tried, meeting Mrs. Jones' eyes was still hard; he had tried to kill her at one point after all. She might appear to have decided to just let it slide, but Alex still felt a spike of shame stab into his stomach whenever he thought about what had happened.

After a few seconds it was clear that Mr. Blunt was not about to start the conversation. Anger flared up but Alex kept it out of voice as he asked brusquely, "You wanted to see me?"

Mr. Blunt paused and slowly put down the pieces of paper he was holding onto the desk.

"Yes." He replied simply. Without waiting to find out if he had more to say, Alex blurted out, "Is what Mr. Crawley said, true?"

Finally, the head of MI6 looked up at him, his eyebrows raised slightly." No doubt he's said many things. How am I supposed to know if any of them are true or not?" His voice was infuriatingly calm and off hand.

Once again, Alex had to stop himself from getting angry. Fists balled slightly, he growled. "You know what I mean. About you stopping using me." Alex swore he saw Mr. Blunt silently mouth what Alex had said to him, as though he was an English teacher mocking him for the poorly phrased words.

He had only been here a minute or two, but already Alex wanted to kill someone. Namely Alan Blunt.

Perhaps sensing how Alex was feeling, it was Mrs. Jones who finally gave him his answer. "Our new Prime Minister has decided he doesn't like the idea of a teenager working for MI6." Alex muttered under his breath something that sounded suspiciously like, "Hear, hear", before asking, "So why am I here then? You could have just told me over the phone or something that you aren't allowed to send me off on any of your stupid missions anymore." There was a slightly venomous edge to his voice now.

This time it was boss of MI6 who spoke. "The PM has agreed with us, reluctantly, that we need you one last time. After this we will never recruit you as a minor again."

Alex hated the tiny self satisfied smile that curled ever so slightly at the older mans thin lips. It didn't take a genius to work out that his words meant that Alex wasn't free forever. In a years time when he was sixteen they would probably ensnare him again, or if not then, when he was eighteen, or at the latest, twenty-one. But he would be ready to face up to them once and for all, Alex promised himself.

Still in that frame of mind, he said carefully. "And what would happen if I refused this mission? Would you just leave me alone?" he very much doubted the answer would be yes, but it was always worth a try.

"No…" _Damn! _"These orders come from the very top. You can't refuse them. You know from past experience what sorts of things are likely to happen if you try. Anyway, all you need to do is complete this one simple mission for us and you'll be free…"_ … For now_, Alex finished mentally.

And though Mr. Blunts sly, emotionless voice gave nothing away, he knew that there was no way this was going to be a simple mission. In the world of Alex Rider, 'simple' missions just didn't seem to exist.

Quickly he reviewed his options in his head. As much as he hated to, Alex sighed in defeat and enquired, "What is it this time? Has an insane criminal stolen the crown jewels? Are Martians invading the USA? Or are mutant bunny rabbits taking over Europe?"

Alex could have sworn Mrs. Jones smiled just slightly at his words. The head of MI6 however, was not amused and simply ignored his flippant remarks.

Mr. Blunt picked up the file in front of him, the one he had placed down earlier while talking to Alex, and flicked through it for a second.

"People are reported missing all the time. Sometimes it's because they have been abducted, killed, had an accident or simply ran away. We suspect many disappearances go unreported though, and many of those that do are never found. Many people living on the streets are among the missing, or have no one who cares enough about them to report their disappearance. And so when these 'missing' people, actually do go missing, it can often be hard to spot."

Alex shook his head in confusion and interrupted, "I don't understand what you mean."

So Mrs. Jones explained the situation clearly for him. "In the last couple of months, a lot of people living homeless on the streets of England's major cities, especially London, have been going missing. As Mr. Blunt said, people going missing is not at all uncommon, but the shear number is worrying. Its hard to tell just how many homeless people have being going missing in the last couple of months. And we suspect it may have been happening on this scale for much longer than that, but because most ofthese people have fallen off thegovernments already radar, we just don't know" Mrs. Jones paused and the slightly disgruntled head of MI6 took the chance to continue outlining the problem to Alex. "Yes, and unfortunately, the police often don't pay as much attention to a homeless person complaining that someone they know has gone missing. They still record it of course, most of the time, but it's the sort of thing that tends to not get looked into very often. Or at least, that was the case until some of the reported missing started to turn up. Dead."

"_Dun, dun, dun! The plot thickens…" _Alex thought to himself. Though, as much as he would hate to admit it, he was intrigued by what he was being told. Not that that meant he wanted to get involved in any crazy plans they had involving him…

"At first it was just one body, then more started to turn up. Some had been dead for a long time, others had been partially cremated. Many where found simply discarded in back alleys. Though the method of disposal varied dramatically, nearly all were missing people who had odd wounds and had lost enough blood from them to kill them. All suffered violent deaths, but since they were mostly homeless, they had nothing that could be stolen from them, so theft could not have been the motivation. We suspect either a group of people have taken it upon themselves to try and rid the streets of the homeless, or some sort of cult is killing them in odd ways as part of some odd ritual or other.

We want you…"

"_Ah, here it comes…"_

"…to pose as a teenager who has ran away from home recently and is having to live on the streets. You'll ask around, see if any of the other homeless have seen anything suspicious or know people who have gone missing and try and see if you can find out who's behind all this."

Here Mr. Blunt stopped. He leant forward on his black leather swivel chair, put his elbows on his posh mahogany desk and clasped his hands together as though in prayer. Perhaps he was. Was there a saint of MI6 bosses he could be beseeching to for help? Or was he praying to God that Alex would agree to help them? Somehow he couldn't see Alan Blunt as much of a God-fearing man. Here at the heart of MI6, he practically was the God of his own little world anyway, why bother with another?

Alex narrowed his eyes and thought about it for a second. "Why me? Why not some other agent?"

"You would not be the first agent we have put on this case. Three others have tried to get to the bottom of this. One was killed in the same way as many others were and the other two are out there still but have found out nothing at all."

"Yes. But still, why me?"

"What Blunt didn't mention." Mrs. Jones replied, "Is that as well as being homeless, most of the victims were under thirty and many of them were just teenagers. The agent who died was twenty-six. The other two are in their forties."

"So you figured that since I'm 'just a teenager'…"

"Oh no, never 'just a teenager'…" Mr. Blunt interrupted, speaking the words quietly.

Mildly disconcerted, Alex changed tack slightly. "Right, umm, but I mean, since I'm a teenager, you think that will mean I'm more likely to get attacked, and that way, if I survive, I will be able to tell you what's going on?"

"Yes. Something like that. We have a background story written up for you already…"

"Of course you do…" Alex said with contempt.

As usual Mr. Blunt ignored the remark. "Those living on the streets usually have problematic pasts that they don't want to talk about, so they are unlikely to interrogate you too much. But you still need a background story."

At this Mrs. Jones walked over and handed him an envelope. He wondered vaguely where it had been before she gave it to him. He defiantly hadn't spotted it out anywhere before hand.

"This contains everything you need to know." She told him before walking back to her usual place behind the head of MI6, standing there like either an angel or a devil who whispered things in his ears. Alex wasn't sure which.

"A nondescript car will arrive at your house at 11 AM on Monday morning. Make sure you've memorized the file by then."

Alex nodded. It was Saturday today; he still had plenty of time to go through it. And it wasn't as though it was a very thick envelope…

"Oh yes, and one last thing before you go, make sure you see Smithers before you leave."

With that Alan Blunt pulled the file he had been looking at originally back in front of him and resumed flicking through it as though Alex wasn't even there.

With a mutter of, "Fine, I'll see my self out then…" He slouched out; closing the door a little harder then he had planned to behind him as he left. It was only once he had started moving again that he realized that at no one point had he actually agreed to all this. Once again he had ended up with another stupid mission. _"At least this is the last time…" _Alex told himself, trying to feel upbeat about it but failing.

Once the door slammed shut Alan Blunt looked up from his papers and Mrs. Jones spoke up. "Why didn't we use Agent Ward? He's only twenty four and probably had as much chance of running into the murderers as Alex does."

"Yes." Blunt agreed. "But though Alex might be much younger then Ward, I suspect he would have a much higher chance of surviving this then Ward would.

But then of course, you have always had a soft spot for the boy, haven't you?"

Taking no notice of Mrs. Jones spluttered reply, he said. "This will be his last mission, remember? The new Prime Minister is far too scared of the truth about Alex reaching the public's ears to allow us to use him again." It was clear from his voice he felt nothing but contempt for the man.

"Until he's sixteen…" Tulip Jones sighed.

"Until he's sixteen." Mr. Blunt confirmed grimly.

**And there is the first chapter of Once Bitten, Twice the Spy. I hope you enjoyed it!**

**Now, lets see...As in A Bad Idea, if anyone reviews in a nice helpful way, (as in give positive feed back, perhaps quotes lines they liked if there were any, or says what it was they liked about it), they get yummy homemade chocolate Brownies, virtual style XD**

**Any one, who flames, is really nasty or anything like that gets their heart dug out with a rusty spoon! (So watch out!)**

**But now there is a new category, positive but unhelpful reviews. These are things like just saying, 'up-date soon/right this minute!' or predicting what you think is going to happen next. These are fine if part of a larger positive review, but by themselves are a bit dangerous.**

'**In what way?' I hear you say. Well…you would still get a chocolate brownie but there's always the slightest chance I might have made it using the same spoon I use to dig peoples hearts out with. This was something a couple of people seemed afraid might happen before, but this time you have been warned!**

**I'm hoping that this story intrigues With The What Now enough for her to want to Beta check it all. Fingers crossed!**

**In this chapter, among other mistakes, she pointed out that at one point I wrote 'Mt. Blunt' Imagine that, a mountain named after Mr. Blunt!**

**And one last bit to this hopelessly long AN, as much as I would like to say this will be updated regularly, I have my GCSE exams looming up ahead soon and so a lot of my time is going to be taken up revising for them and then taking the exams. That doesn't mean this fanfic will get forgotten about or left un-updated for months, as I will work hard to update it as often as I can.**


	2. Gadgets

**I'm not entirely sure why I've been so reluctant to start this next chapter. It's not that I don't know what to write, I've gone over the beginning in my head several times. It could be guilt; I have so much else I should be doing. Lack of time has also been a factor…**

**But never mind that, it's finished now anyway, even if it has taken me much longer then I would like… Unfortunately I've spent most of the small amounts of time that I've had free, and so should have spent writing this, messing around, scanning in pics from the Alex Rider graphic novels. Its fun re-colouring them and change the words and stuff ^^. I spent ages making my little icon but I am happy with the results.**

**I think I will start doing chapter summaries in case people forget what happened in the last chapter in-between updates.**

**Disclaimer: Ok, so he's not scared of snakes. Even when one started to nom on his leg, Mr. Horrowitz wouldn't give up the rights to the Alex Rider series to me. **

**What should I try next?...**

**Summary of last chapter:**

**MI6 have promised Alex they will stop using him (at least until he's grown up) if he goes on one more mission for them.**

**Many homeless people have disappeared over the last few months and dead bodies with strange wounds have been turning up** **Alex's job is to pose as a teenager who recently ran away from home and is now living on the streets. He will try to find out what exactly is happening and who is behind the odd goings-on.**

**But first…**

_Gadgets_

Alex Rider smiled to himself, feeling a little glimmer of pride at how easily he had managed to find Smithers' office by himself. Sure, there had been someone following him at a discreet distance to make sure he didn't go anywhere he wasn't supposed to, but it was his good memory and sense of direction that had led him to the right place.

He raised his right fist and lightly tapped on the door. There was no response.

Was Smithers somewhere else then, not in his office? But surely someone would have warned him Alex was being sent over to his office?

Alex knocked harder, but once again there was no reply. He waited a moment, wondering if he should go ask someone… He glanced up and down the corridor he was in. No sign of anyone, not even the person who had been keeping an eye on him.

There was always a chance that Smithers was in there but simply hadn't heard Alex's knocks…

With a sigh, Alex did the inevitable and tried the door handle. It wasn't locked and as he pushed the door gently open, he froze like an urban fox caught in the sudden dazzling light of a torch.

The door opened, not to the office as he had expected, but onto a tropical rainforest.

For a second Alex was disoriented. What on Earth? But a quick glance behind him showed the same nondescript cream wall that had been there the last time he looked. Cautiously, crouching slightly in preparation for fight or flight, Alex stepped lightly into the office, or jungle, or what ever it was.

Immediately, he found himself in a small clearing, surrounded by all sorts of foreign looking tropical plants. He could hear the sounds of the rainforest as well, from the chirrups and calls of a multitude of different insects, to the distant cry of what might have been a monkey, or perhaps a bird.

"Hello?" Alex whispered, then, annoyed with his sudden lack of bravery, said it again but louder. Without moving from where he was, he turned this way and that, trying to spot Smithers, or anyone at all for that matter. Every few seconds he looked back through the open door, just to reassure himself that he was still in the head quarters of MI6. Or at least, by all rights, that Alex should be.

Just when he was thinking of moving, though where to, he wasn't sure, a strange thing happened.

Smithers' head suddenly appeared. Just his head, nothing else. It was a lot lower down then he would have expected too, about chest height. Alex stared at him in amazement and in relief as well. At least he had found the person he was looking for, even if it under strange circumstances. Not that Smithers was the sort of person to do things in a normal way…

"Hello old chap." The Gadget Master boomed in his usual jovial fashion. "How are you?"

"Umm...a little confused to be honest…" Alex confessed, shrugging his shoulders and looking around to try and show that it was the whole leafy vegetation thing that was puzzling him.

Smithers smile grew wider. "Touch a leaf."

Though Alex knew Smithers would never intentionally hurt him, he still hesitated a little before reaching out to touch the nearest plant. To Alex's surprise, his hand went straight through it. He waved his hand up and down through it several times, just to check that his first impression had been correct. Every time his hand slipped through what appeared to be a perfectly solid piece of foliage without the slightest resistance. Alex grinned. "What is all this? A hologram?"

"Something like that", the older man's head agreed, nodding. "Top secret though, so I couldn't possibly show you it or tell you how it works." He winked at that.

Then his head moved slightly to the side and a second later, Alex heard something go 'click' and then hum slightly before the tropical plant life around him flickered out of existence, taking its jungle noises with it.

In just a moment, Smithers office returned to being just that; an office. All that was left of the greenery was two large plot pants in the middle of a large desk. Smithers was sitting at the desk, peering through the plants. Now that all the fake ones had gone, Alex was able to see the large rounded shoulders and torso of the man sitting there so he no longer looked like a disembodied head.

The Gadget's Man straightened up, and with a grunt, put the plants on the floor next to his desk before turning back to Alex, still beaming up at him.

"So what did you think of that? Was it convincing?"

"It was brilliant!" Alex replied in genuine awe, "I really thought I had ended up in a rainforest or something for a second there!" He didn't mention that it had all reminded him a little too much of the real life version of Feathered Serpents that he had once been forced to play. Some of the parts of that game had had similar settings, though they had been done with prosthetics mainly, not illusions.

"Of course, the lightings all wrong in here and so is the humidity…" Smithers mused to himself. "But that could be easily fixed."

Alex nodded vaguely in agreement.

Then, the rather over weight man leaned forward slightly and changed tact, "Anyway, we're not here to talk about that little invention of mine, but _gadgets_." Smithers could make the word 'gadgets' sound like some sort of holy relic or mysterious treasure.

"I heard you were going to be living on the streets for a while" He continued, "meaning I couldn't exactly give you a Nintendo or I-Pod, now could I?" Despite the fact that this made prefect, logical sense, Alex still found himself feeling slightly disappointed.

"I had to work with things that where a bit more basic…step back will you, my boy?"

Alex did so, retreating hastily away from nothing in particular.

Then Smithers put a hand under his desk and flicked a switch, causing the solid front section of his big, tinted glass and silver desk to slide smoothly forward, if a little too rapidly for Alex's liking - If he hadn't stepped back, it would have definitely sent him flying across the room.

Smithers used the edge of the desk to propel his large bulk and the swivel chair beneath it, backwards slightly, before reaching into a pocket and bringing out a small remote-control. With practiced ease he used it to make the swivel chair sidle around the desk, to the side of the large compartment that had just opened up.

He beckoned Alex over from where he had been standing, just in case anything else decided to spring out at him.

Alex watched as the other man reached towards the large slide out compartment. It had a solid black top that didn't appear to have any sort of visible handle to it. Somehow though, Alex wasn't so surprised when Smithers' arm appeared to melt straight through it. Another illusion.

"Now lets see what we've got for you…Aha!" Smithers pulled his arm out, holding in his podgy hands a small white plate covered in... "Biscuits!"

"Biscuits?" Alex stared at them warily. He knew by now not to underestimate anything the Gadget Master showed him, even if it was something as simple as these. What would they do? Explode? Send messages back to MI6? Track his location? They looked harmless enough, circular, plain on one side, covered in chocolate on the other. They looked pretty generic to Alex, until he spotted the loopy writing on the plain side, saying 'Smithers'. So they were definitely something to do with the man in front of him…

A second later, when the plate was thrust under his nose, he couldn't help flinching slightly, which made the other man chuckle. "Go on, take one, they're quite safe and very tasty, if I do say so my self.

Under Smithers watchful eye, Alex reached out and picked one up. Its texture was normal to the touch, it's smell was normal, it's weight was normal (not that Alex was an expert on biscuit weights), and after a tentative bite, he discovered it tasted perfectly normal as well.

"Gum arn they?" Alex looked up at Smithers, who was trying to talk despite a mouthful of biscuit.

"I'm sorry," There was a pause while the Gadgets man swallowed. "Good aren't they?"

"Ah, yes. But what do they do?"

"Well, despite looking perfectly normal, just five of these biscuits are enough food to last a grown man all day. Sure, you would be a little hungry when you go to bed, but you could live off these successfully for years. They have everything your body needs to operate properly, packed into a couple of mouthfuls of food. You'll need water though, they certainly can make you thirsty by the tenth or so…

Anyway, we originally designed them to try and end world hunger, but unfortunately it turns out they are just too rich, the poor under nourished little children's bodies just couldn't cope with them and their parents fared little better, so we're back to the drawing board on that one I'm afraid."

At that, Smithers put the plate down on his desk and leaned forward in his chair. "Luckily for you though, your digestive system should have no problem dealing with the biscuits, and if you're going to be living on the streets for a while, you're going to need all the food you can get! There are certain tablets you could use of course, but three or four packets of biscuits stuffed into a back-pack are much less conspicuous then a dozen super-tablets that haven't yet been released to the general public."

"No, I can't imagine many homeless people carrying those around." Alex agreed dryly.

"So biscuits it is!"

He reached under the illusion and brought out five packets of biscuits, which he then dumped on Alex's lap. Picking one up, Alex could see that though it was clearly a made up brand with Smithers name on it, even the packaging itself looked just like that of any other brand, though with enough changes of course to stop them breaking copyright laws.

He turned the packet over and studied the underside. The ingredients list and all the nutritional information required by law was there, though Alex had a feeling that if they were as amazing as Smithers claimed, the information must have been faked. Though just a small thing, Alex bet that even less significant things had led to spies being caught out in the past, and he certainly didn't want that to happen to him. Again.

"Right, next, sleeping bag and clothes." Once again he stuck his hand through what appeared to be perfectly solid tinted black glass, this time pulling out several items.

"This..." Smithers held up a bulging compact black bag, "…is the latest in sleeping bag technology. It's filling, though no thicker then normal, well exceeds the insulating abilities of all other makes. It regulates your body temperature and stops you freezing or over heating in conditions twelve times more extreme then Dupant Thermolite Micro can manage. Everything is covered in a layer of our latest improvements on Gore-Tex, making the sleeping bag waterproof but perfectly breathable, and the outside is made of a tight weave with nanotubes incorporated into the design."

Alex nodded vaguely as though he was following; his class had been told about Gore-Tex in Year 9 science but couldn't remember much about it, and he had never heard of Dupant Thermo-whatever, but he thought he might have come across the word 'nanotubes' somewhere before…in connection to nanoparticles perhaps? Hadn't Scorpia used nanotechnology to try and kill all the children in England?

Alex was distracted from his train of thought when the black pack was thrust into his arms, quickly followed by several items of clothing, "Um, what?..."

Smithers answered the question before Alex even got the chance to finish asking it.

"You'll need these to look the part. Luckily for you, Alex, your cover story is that you're new to living on the streets, so you're allowed perfectly clean clothes to wear, at least to start with. You won't be able to carry around more than a couple of changes of clothes with you as anymore would just be too bulky. These clothes are pretty ordinary looking, nothing designer or particularly fashionable of course, but they will keep you warm and repel against grime to a certain extent, but living on the streets for any length of time will unfortunately lead to an unavoidable slip in hygiene levels, of course."

Alex rolled his eyes, "Great." But he had lived through similar situations before, of course, when trying to investigate the Snakeheads in India, so he was sure he would be able to cope, even if he would much rather just stay clean.

"Both pairs of trousers have a tracker system implanted in them. I was going to implant one in the sleeping bag instead, but it was decided that trousers are less likely to be stolen."

Then Smithers leant back once more and fished out a slightly tattered looking skiing coat. "We went for the whole 'Worn but reliable' look here, but make sure you keep your hands on this jacket, it contains the only weapon I was able to get away with, as well as being as knife resistant as we could get it in the circumstances…"

Which Alex took to mean, '_if you get stabbed it will probably still kill you, and hurt like hell even if it doesn't.'_

"It's also capable of sending out a strong electrical pulse into anyone who might come into contact with it. So, if you're in a fight, make sure you're wearing this coat. The way it works is, you see this little button here?" He pointed to what looked like the rubber covering of a button that fastened up a small pocket, on it was a small logo engraved in the shape of a lightning bolt, just the sort of thing other skiing jackets had that usually referred to its make.

"It's fingerprint sensitive. If anyone else turns it for some reason or if it ends up somehow swivelling around as you move, nothing will happen. If you move it round slightly clockwise though, it will give anyone who touches the coat an electric shock. The further you turn it, the worse the shock. Careful though, it can be turned up high enough to possibly kill someone if you use all it's power up in one go. Whatever happens, it won't hurt you though, you're safely insulated inside it…that said though, some of my lab technicians did report some rather nasty static shocks off of it…but I'm sure you'll be fine!" With that, Smithers dumped the coat on top of the other clothes and reached through the hologram one last time. "And finally we have the bag you'll need." It was a battered looking back-pack, the type a lot of people used in school, especially the younger students, despite the fact that the bags tended to completely dwarf them.

"It contains a high-powered torch, some first aid equipment like plasters and bandages, a bit of money, a couple of bottles of water, enough room for all your clothes, and…ah, yes! And a mobile phone. The phones' history, saved text messages, dates and pictures all match up with your assumed identity."

He handed over the rucksack and Alex stuffed the clothes into it, along with the envelope Mrs. Jones had given him containing his cover story.

There wasn't room for the sleeping bag, but the little black shell it went in had a long cord attached that he could tie onto a thick loop of plastic attached to the bag for just that reason.

Sitting back, Smithers tried to think of anything else he needed to give the young spy.

"I think that's everything…" He mused to himself, and then coming to the conclusion that that was right, he clapped his hands together and said more loudly, "Yes, that's everything I've got to give you my boy, hope you get a chance to try out the new I-Phone I've created on your next mission. I've named it the SpI-Phone and it's certainly got the apps to live up to the name…"

Alex didn't have the heart to tell him that, hopefully, this would be his last ever mission, and simply shook his hand in farewell, said his goodbyes and left with his gadgets, though he felt that the super-duper thermal underwear didn't exactly count as a 'gadget' at all.

**Well that's that chapter, sorry that so little happened in it and that it took so long that With the What Now probably thought I must have just died at some point during writing it…**

**And I'm not sure when the next will be out. My GCSE exams are getting closer every day, I have so much revision and art work to do… The chaos doesn't end until near the end of June, and then I've got Summer School (something I didn't even realise existed in England until recently), and then shortly after that I'm in a performance of 'Wyrd Sisters'. I'm the fool! Some of my lines are going to be interesting considering there delivered by a girl, such as 'Seventeen years under the bladder, man and boy.' I've also got to call another girl 'Absolutely beautiful' and kiss her for fifteen years, lol! I mean, I've played plenty of male characters before, especially in some spoof films me and some friends made, (I was Snake from K-Unit! And then Bunny Rabbit from 'Gay-unit' XD) but Ive never done anything like this…**

**But I've gone waaaaay off point here, what I meant to say is just that it might be a while before the next chapters up. The next chapter and perhaps the one after that will just be about Alex living on the streets. I really want to fast-track to the more interesting parts, but pacing is important for a decent story…**

**I've worked things out in my head and its looks as though this whole story could end up being about twelve chapters long. I've also thought up a couple more characters, ones who are going to make Alex's life full of even more bloody violence and abuse then first planned, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to put the rating up a little later. How do people feel about the possibility of Alex getting so badly beaten up and abused?**

**All the information about his sleeping bag and stuff is taken from the info on my own sleeping bag, a couple of pages in a science text book, plus a small amount of imagination, thus I doubt it makes very little logical sense…**

**I did do some research though. I ate a couple of biscuits… Tasty research!**

**Please Review! Though I understand that very little has happened in the last chapter to comment on…**

**(Sorry about the mile long AN by the way...)**


	3. Those That Care

**Another thing worth mentioning is that I'm re-reading the Alex Rider series. Again.**

**It's going to take me a while, not because I'm a slow reader (the opposite is true), but because I'm jotting down any helpful quotes as I go along. Even though I've only so far read through Stormbreaker, I've already had some real surprises.**

**If you're living in America, there is a chance some of these things might have changed for some random reason, but I don't see why they should.**

**1. Alex has dark drown eyes that are noted as 'serious' before he has even been on any missions**

**2. Yassen has the body of a dancer! (I just get an image of him twirling round in a tutu lol)**

**3. Jack has a round, boyish face and is in her twenties.**

**4. As far as I know, Eagle is the only member of K-unit who is never given a description or any sort of personality- Snake gets about two lines worth at the end of the training, but that's more then Eagle gets!**

**5. K-unit are not in fact SAS soldiers. They are Special Operations Division (SOD!) of MI6, so are in fact linked to MI6, but are at an SAS training camp because much of the training is the same. (If any of them is different in the foreign version of the books, it will be this one I think, because how else could so many people have made the same mistake?)**

**I am also thinking of adding a list of all injuries he acquires that might result in a scar to my profile, because people are always writing about his scars, especially the one from the bullet, but this might help people be a little bit more specific.**

**Disclaimer: Maybe I will let him off the torture this time because I'm going to listen to his talk, so for now, I do not own the Alex Rider series. **

**Another insanely long AN over and out!**

**No wait, recap!**

**Fully gadget-ed up, Alex is preparing to go on his 'last ever mission', living on the streets for a few weeks, posing as a homeless person. Sounds simple right? Wrong! It's funny how innocently these things sometimes start…**

_Those that Care…_

"So?" Alex had barely stepped in the door before Jack ran through from the kitchen to question him.

He sighed and dumped the items Smithers had given him down on the floor. As he straightened back up, he answered, "They promised to let me go…" A beacon of hope flared briefly in Jack's heart, but she could tell from her charges voice that it was about to be doused in icy water, "…After one more mission."

Jack didn't know what to say, she was torn in two. On the one hand, one more mission and he was free! Never to be harmed again, kept here safe where she could always, always watch over him.

On the other, they were using him, again. Another mission, from which he would return, scarred both physically and mentally - if he returned at all, that was. Jack wouldn't put it past those heartless bastards to send him off on a mission even more dangerous than any before, just because it was their one last chance to cause the two of them misery and pain.

Alex could guess pretty much what was going on in her head, and as if to try and make it seem a little better in some way, he blurted out, "I'm not even leaving London this time!"

Curious despite herself, Jack asked, "What mess has the government got themselves into here at home that you need to solve? Don't tell me, the Prime Ministers' forgotten how to tie his shoe laces…" As she spoke she tilted her face, curtained by hundreds of strands of red hair, stubbornly defying all efforts to keep them in some sort of order in their quest to follow their own personal agenda, upwards.

Her hands rose to rub at her eyes as she stifled her true emotions behind a comment that was as sarcastic as it was bitter.

"Nothing to do with the government. Hopefully… All I need to do is pose as a homeless person for…" He paused, "Actually, they never did tell me how long it was going to be for. Probably for as long takes for me to run into lots of trouble…" Alex's voice was dull and resigned.

Jack muttered what sounded to Alex like a string of swearwords aimed at MI6, before slowly letting her hands run down her face like tears, and then drop limply to her sides. "But It's your last ever mission, right? They really promised to leave you alone after this?"

Alex nodded, "Yeah, last mission _ever_." He put extra emphasis on ever, as though savouring just how long that one word indicated.

Sure, there was a large chance that MI6 would snatch him up again as soon as he left compulsory education at the age of sixteen, or perhaps a few years later, but he pushed that depressing thought aside. There was no need to tell Jack his suspicions. Alex didn't want to hurt her anymore, if the thought of him never having to be blackmailed into working for the government again after this gave her some sort of comfort, he was loath to take it away again.

Jack seemed to have quickly adjusted to the fact that he was being sent out into danger one more time; by now, she had almost gotten used to the prospect. Didn't make it any easier though, watching him go. Neither did clucking about him like a mother hen, but she just couldn't help it sometimes, he had been her charge and close friend for so long, and if she didn't mother him a bit, no matter how much it annoyed him, who else would?

"Aren't you going to get cold, sleeping rough?"

"Smithers gave me specialized clothes and a sleeping bag, they'll keep me warm. Anyway, It's been pretty warm so far for early May"

"But what about at night?"

"Like I said, specialized stuff." Here, Alex shrugged slightly, waving his hand in the general direction of the items on the floor that the gadget Master had given him.

"Won't you get hungry?"

"No, I will be fine! Anyway, hungers not so bad." He hated how pompous and falsely macho the words sounded to him.

"I mean, Smithers gave me some super-duper-last-a-whole-day-on-one-crumb-biscuits."

Jack laughed. "Right, so lets get this straight, MI6 is sending you out into the streets of London…with high-tech cookies! Well, isn't that jolly good? Just spiffing sirrah!"

Half way through her mini rant, Jacks voice morphed into a sarcastic, over the top, version of the stereotypical posh English accent.

As a jokey retort, Alex put on an exaggerated American accent, "Yup, that's right dude."

They continued like that for several minutes, forgetting their worries as they teased each other good naturedly. They soon branched out, Alex having a go at imitating a Yorkshire man, "I walked t' dog t' park an back again." While Jack attempted Australian. She didn't get very far with it though, and ended up doubled up with laughter after a couple of words.

It was only when she almost tripped over the black bag lying on the floor that they were both brought back to the matter at hand.

Alex sighed. "Guess I better go drop this stuff off in my room…I've got a file to read on who I'm supposed to be anyway…"

The laughter of a moment ago forgotten, Jack nodded gravely. "But if you have time, could you go through that old box of stuff that was in the hallway cupboard? I put it in your room, it's about time you decided what you want to keep in there and what we can throw away. Most of it's just old school work and we could do with the storage room it's all currently taking up."

"Sure." Alex answered as he made his way up the stairs.

Once in his room, with its tattered football posters on the walls, its black duvet covered bed and its mad tangle of wires in the corner that connected up to his Playstation 2, X-Box, TV and DVD player, though in no understandable way, he dumped the black bag, trailing the sleeping bag shell behind it, on the blue carpeted floor.

The box Jack had mentioned was at the foot of his bed. It was see-through with a blue lid. Though Alex knew MI6 would want him to start reading up on his character profile, he decided he would much rather go through the box. Kneeling down on the carpet he lifted the lid off. At the top were his school books from last year. He wasn't entirely sure why he had kept them, but flicked through a couple anyway. They both had an unusual amount of pages left blank at the end and after a while the dates started to jump forward erratically between some of the entries. It was a testimony to all the work he had missed because of his 'job'.

With a sigh Alex dropped the books onto what was going to be his 'bin' pile.

About half the box was boring school books, though one from Year 8 caught his eye. It was larger then the others with a smooth black cover and his name on a sticky label in the corner. Alex recognised it as his old art book from the days in which he had done the subject. It had been fun dosing round in Art with Tom and his other friends, but he had had no artistic talent to speak of and so hadn't chosen it as one of his options.

Looking at it brought back some interesting memories, especially the sheet of paper that fell out from the middle.

On it was a beautifully done pencil sketch of his own face, rounder then it was now, and with shorter hair, but still with the same serious look to it, if a little less world-weary.

Alex allowed his mind to wonder back to the day it had been drawn.

They had been set the task of getting into pairs and drawing a portrait of their partner. Alex had teamed up with Tom and the two of them had had fun laughing at each others appalling attempts at art. Tom's had been even worse then Alex's, more like a messy-haired gorilla then anything else.

On seeing it their art teacher had had a rant, though he couldn't remember now exactly what she had said, something about cheek bones perhaps…

In the end she had got so worked up about it, she had forced Alex to sit still while she had a go at drawing him. Though his face had burned with embarrassment at being singled out by his teacher, he had had to admit that the product at the end of the half-hour left of the lesson, had been pretty incredible. Alex wasn't entirely sure how he had ended up taking it home, but looking at it now brought up a bitter-sweet feeling inside him. It was like looking back on a far-away, care-free time, one that he could never return to.

Without really thinking about it, he carefully placed down the book and the sheet of paper as the start of his 'to keep' pile.

Below his Year 7 stuff (all of which he promptly threw away), he found some toys from his childhood he had completely forgotten about.

There were a couple of small, portable board games, a jigsaw puzzle, a broken yo-yo, two bouncy balls, a squished metal slinky, a plastic cricket bat and countless blunt wax and pencil crayons that were all unceremoniously dumped on the rubbish pile.

There were a couple of things he decided to keep though.

One was a rather random little badge which he had found safety pinned to the slinky. It was pale blue with the slogan, "Some people are like slinkies - pretty useless, but fun to push down the stairs*", written in black. For some reason this amused Alex, and though he had no idea where it had come from, he decided to pin it to the back-pack Smithers had given to him.

The other thing was a midnight blue teddy bear. He couldn't remember who had given it him, and in fact, he had completely forgotten it even existed. But the scuffed little teddy with Alex's name embroided in silver loopy writing on its chest, had been around all his life. Or at least it felt like that. And for some reason, he couldn't just chuck it away. He felt stupid even admitting it to himself, how could he, Alex Rider, teenage super spy, go all weak and sentimental over a toy that he had no idea of where it had come from? Maybe sometime he would ask Jack if she knew where it had come from, but not now.

With the box fully emptied he shoved the art book and teddy bear under his bed and headed off downstairs to get a bin bag for all the things he was getting rid of.

In the kitchen he bumped into Jack crying.

With a smile, he asked, "Have you been chopping up onions?"

Blinking furiously, she said, "How did you know?"

"Well the vegetable knife** your holding covered in bits of onion is a clue." Alex jerked his head to the counter Jack was standing several paces away from. On top of it was a cutting board with a couple of onions on it, one half cut up. "So were the onions."

Jack smiled. "I guess it wouldn't take a teenage spy to work that out." At that, the smile faltered slightly.

"Just remember, one more mission and then we can celebrate it all being over by going to Pizza Hut or something."

"What about having a party? I could get some 'Happy retirement balloons!'"

"Stop it, your making me feel old! Anyway, it would be a pretty lame party, just you and me."

"And Tom."

"Oh yes, and Tom."

_Talking about Tom, I better see if he ever texted me back…"_ Alex thought to himself as he fished out a large black bin bag from one of the kitchen cupboard.

He had. There were several texts waiting for Alex, asking him how the meeting with MI6 had gone, if he was really going to stop being a spy and if Alex had given Mr. Blunt a punch in the face from him as he had asked Alex to do.

He texted back, telling Tom what had happened, and that, no, he hadn't punched him…yet.

He had better E-mail Sabina soon, and repeat the whole thing to her as well. Oh well, at least he had people who cared that much about him. Pity MI6 didn't…

***I read this on someone's profile on Fanfiction I think, and it just stuck…**

****I can't believe I've managed to get vegetable knives into two of my fanfictions now…How cool is that?**

**Yes, I admit it; it was a long wait for yet another chapter in which nothing happened (and a short one at that!). I wouldn't be surprised if half the people reading this story have given up by now, though I have no idea if it's possible to tell how many people read a chapter… If the reviews are anything to go by- not many! It's a good thing I didn't say something like, 'If I don't get five reviews I won't carry on this story', because if I had done that, I wouldn't have been able to put any new chapters up!**

**Next chapter really will be about Alex being on the streets, like I said this one would be…**

**However, I have now broken up for study leave, and sadly this means I actually have to study. T.T…**


	4. And Those That Don't

**Yup, this is going to be yet another long AN, but bare with me, there's stuff I'm going to say that you are soooooo going to want to know.**

**I'm going to start off with the slightly more boring stuff though.**

**First thing is that a while back I came across a book to do with the Alex Rider series, it wasn't an actual story but a collection of documents and pictures and stuff to do with the different books. I leafed through it, and on the first page for Snakehead had the motto 'Once bitten, twice spy'. I was like- DAMN! I thought I had been original with the title. Mine sounds better though…since it has 'the' in it…makes all the difference you know…**

**The second thing is was of those blatantly obvious things that are staring you in the face but you don't think about. And that's the fact that my second name is Alexandra- Alex! XD Yay! What are you all looking at me like that for? I know it's stupid, but it made me happy…**

**Ok, now getting to the important bit-I mentioned in the last chapter that I was going to see a talk by Anthony Horowitz twice in one day. I now have.**

**He was a brilliant speaker, witty, informative and entertainment. I also learnt several hints and clues as to what's going to happen in the next, and last, Alex Rider book- Scorpia Rising. Man, just the title makes me want to shiver!**

**So you lucky people who have decided to stay with this little story are going to hopefully find out some very interesting information, which I am going to tell you at the end AN, plus the one in the next chapter! (Well I've got to think of something to get anyone to read this, don't?)**

***Watches as everyone skips down to bottom AN* Hey, wait! Come back…please?**

**Disclaimer: Ok, so perhaps the Alex Rider books shall never be mine… They will always belong to Anthony Horowitz. Yay for him, however, listening to what he said made me even more determined to get my book ideas published one day.**

**Recap: Well to be honest, not much has changed since the last recap… So if you've forgotten what's happened, go check that one! Or you could always just start reading and hope it all comes back to you, like I usually do…**

…And Those that Don't

Alex was cold and hungry. Sure, he had survived much worse but that didn't stop him being any less miserable. Leaning against the outside wall of a shop in a busy street, he reflected that after four days of living on the streets, he was no closer to achieving, well, anything, than he had been when he started out.

He was also extremely bored. He had spent most of the time since he had left home, wondering around the busy streets of London.

Most of he time nobody paid any attention to him, and he preferred it that way. Just one among thousands of people whose busy little lives crossed paths without them even realising it.

It was natural for someone who was both a spy and a great believer in staying alive to avoid being noticed, but it went deeper then that. There was also the fact that he wasn't really homeless, just sort of pretending to be. It seemed incredible to Alex that others couldn't see the spiky, crackling aura around him that was the repeated mantra of, '_Don't look at me with scorn, don't look at my with sympathy, I'm not really homeless_, _I don't need your contempt, I don't need your help! Don't look at me like that!'_

Inside he raged and swore at MI6 for making him stoop so low, or at least that's what he felt like he was doing.

There was guilt as well. Despite the fact his pride had refused to allow him to start begging, a couple of people had pressed coins into his hand, much to Alex's surprise. There were so many other people who needed the money more then him…It didn't stop Alex pocketing the money all the same. Smithers' biscuits were all well and good, but who knew how long they would last? The same applied to small handful of crushed ten and five pound notes that he had been provided with.

Though he had spent a time slumming it before, that time it had been with Ash. Even if he had turned out to be a traitor, he had been someone to turn to. Here, in the city of London, his home, he had no one.

Alex had also been worried about the fact that someone he knew might notice him, but this was the other side of London, and pretending to be homeless pretty much made him invisible to the masses, a mark on their otherwise perfect little lives. And anyway, even if someone recognised him, Alex could always feign ignorance and perhaps put on a different accent to add to the lie. Thinking of accents reminded him of Jack. It was funny really, leaning against the hard brick wall with nothing better to do, Alex's thoughts kept coming back to a small number subjects. One was Jack, Tom and Sabina, the people he knew would be worrying about him. Another was MI6's too-good-to-be-true promise. There was Ash as well, and for some odd reason, Yassen. Alex hated thinking about either of them. One was the long lost family link who had betrayed them all, the other his father's friend, but his uncles assassin. A murderer. An evil man*, and yet one who had died because he refused to kill Alex. God, people where so complicated!

And just when he felt as though he was drowning in dark memories, Alex's concentration would flicker back to the present. He had been working as a spy for a year and two or three months now,** and at some point during that time he seemed to have subconsciously realised that daydreaming was an unhealthy habit for teenage spies who actually wanted to live. So though he now had a lot to daydream (Or should that be daymare?) about, he rarely indulged.

_Urgh. I thought it was supposed to be Spring! Or Summer…_ Alex couldn't quite remember which. _But what ever it is, I swear the weather is supposed to be nicer then this! Then again, this is England… Wish I was on holiday somewhere nice and warm, It's been so cold for so long here.* Then again, these days I only go to nice places so I can be shot at. _"Oh joy." Alex grumbled to himself softly, not loud enough for any of those hurrying past him to hear. _But not anymore! I will make MI6 let me go, or die trying! _A grim smile tugged at the blond boy's mouth as he pulled the zip on his coat a little higher. Though a rather boring gadget, Alex had to admit the coat worked. Despite looking quite thin, it kept his torso and arms warm. Pity he didn't have anything that could warm up his face. Alex was also regretting forgetting to put gloves on. Especially at night.

The nights were much worse then the days. Alex had slept rough in London three times now and amazingly, he was still alive. That is, he hadn't frozen to death yet or been murdered by some psychopath or other…

The first night he had slept on the steps of a bank. Ironic, yes, and it hadn't exactly been a goodnights sleep. He had only slept for about half an hour due to the fact that the cold and apprehension had kept him awake, when he was chased off by a rather unpleasant security guard. Alex had been rather tempted to swing round and kick him hard in the gut for all the things he was yelling, but knew it wouldn't be worth it.

By the second night he had been exhausted and had ended up trying to sleep in a children's park, underneath some apparatuses. It smelt of fags but at least there was no broken glass on the ground from smashed bottles of alcohol. It was eleven o'clock before the place was finally abandoned by the sort of teenagers who thought they were as cool as it got because they skived off school and took drugs. Chances were they were off to try and get into some club or other. Alex very much doubted they had left because it was their bed times.

Despite the cold and discomfort, Alex soon dropped off to sleep. Though he woke up a couple of times during the night, he had a much better night than the one before.

On the third evening he had returned nervously to the park, but ended up abandoning it after a couple of hours when a small-time dealer came along and tried offering him drugs. It had been obvious from the way he had talked that he targeted the homeless, giving them drugs for cheap until they were hooked and he had complete control. Then he could get them to do what ever he wanted; steal, mug or work as prostitutes in order to get there next fix.

There was no way in hell Alex was going to start on drugs, something he told the man, but the idiot hadn't taken no for an answer.

It was then that Alex had snapped, pushing the drug dealer away, and then when he retaliated, he let him have it. The fight was short and one sided, the dealer never stood a chance. Alex left him unconscious and missing several sachets of a mysterious white powder. Dropping the drugs into a random bin, Alex had decided it would be best to avoid that particular park in future.

He had ended up sleeping behind one of the many Tesco shops dotted around the city in their constant war with the other big chains like Asda and Morrisons.

No one had disturbed him there.

It was starting to get late. Alex had been leaning against the shop wall for so long that he felt as though he had almost forgotten how to move. Pealing himself away from the brick, he walked along the high street aimlessly until he had worked out all the stiffness in his muscles. Alex stuffed his hands in his pockets in an attempt to warm them up slightly, and pulled his hood up.

After only few seconds though, he pushed it back down. It restricted his vision too much, making him feel jumpy and vulnerable.

After a couple of hours wondering round, he retired to the alley behind Tesco's again. He had only been there a short time though, when someone else joined him.

Looking out of the corner of his eye, Alex watched the stranger pull a grimy looking sleeping bag out of a white tattered plastic bag. It was obvious that he had been living on the streets quite a while, his clothes were in need of a wash, and his hair likewise. What Alex could glimpse of his skin looked pretty clean though, like he still made as much of an effort to stay clean as he could.

Perhaps this was Alex's chance to try and find out more about the mysterious disappearances! But first he needed an ice breaker…

"Want a biscuit?" Alex held out a half empty packet of Smithers biscuits.

The stranger looked surprised, and slowly leaned over, as though afraid it was a trick and that Alex would whip the food out of reach at the last minute.

Despite the bad light, Alex saw that the other man was actually not that much older then Alex himself, eighteen or nineteen at the most. He had long brown hair and bright blue eyes, which watched the biscuits warily until he had finally got hold of one. Upon finding out that the offer of food, however small, wasn't a trick after all, he had smiled and said, "Thanks mate. Fag?"

Alex shook his head and replied simply, "Don't smoke." The other teenager laughed slightly, "You will soon, if you stick around long enough. Most people do, stops you getting as hungry and gives you something to take your mind off things."

As he pulled out a battered packet of cigarettes and a lighter from one of his pockets, he continued, "But don't do drugs. I've seen way too many people start on drugs and end up ruining their lives. Well, ruining them even more…"

He wolfed down the biscuit, before lighting a cigarette and staring at the packet in Alex's hand. Rolling his eyes, the spy took the hint and passed it over. "Keep it. I've got some more."

"Oh, thanks mate!" And he really did sound as though he meant it, as though being given a packet of biscuits had made his life. Alex was starting to relax a little more now. It didn't look as though the stranger was malevolent, in fact, it seemed as though he was enjoying having someone else to talk to.

"The drug dealers can get really nasty too; you should have seen what they did to a friend of mine! He ended up in hospital. Said it made a nice change to sleep on a bed and get a proper wash though… but the food was rubbish!"

Alex listened passively to his friendly banter, glad of the company.

"The names Blue by the way. Course, it's not my real name, that would be stupid." He laughed. "Hardly any one uses their real names though, knew a guy once who called himself Skunk. It was pretty appropriate… What are you called then?" For the first time he took a moment to have a proper look at the younger teen. As he had already guessed, it was clear that he was pretty new to the streets. Everything about him was a little too clean for someone who had been sleeping rough for very long. The boy had a serious look about him though. He looked like the kind of person who had had a pretty bad life so far, despite his slightly posh accent. Blue was good at spotting a survivor, and knew that this boy was definitely one.

He watched as the teenager smiled slightly to himself, as though thinking of a private joke, before he replied, "Cub." It was obvious from the way he said it that there was some sort of ironic meaning in the name.

Faintly curios, Blue asked, "What kind of cub?"

"Huh?"

"You know, wolf cub, fox cub…" He paused as he tried to think of any others.

To his surprise, a look of horror had crossed Cub's face. "No! Neither of those, absolutely not, never!"

Perplexed, the older teen asked, "What, don't you like wolves and foxes?"

"I have no problems with the animals themselves…just…." _How best to put this?_ Alex wondered to himself. "I used to know a couple of guys who used those names and I don't fancy being labelled as a younger version of them to be honest."

"Okay, okay, there are other animals. Like, umm… Bears! Though you don't look much like a bear cub to me. What else… cheetah? Leopard? Dog? No, wait, that's puppies. What about Tigers? Yeah, they all have cubs, don't they? But what else…"

Alex tuned out slightly from Blue's musings as he glanced around, positive that he had heard some sort of noise. Something just felt weird… wrong… dangerous…

_This is stupid. I'm going to be saying my 'spy-der sense is tingling' next!_

Blue noticed nothing, and made him pay proper attention by loudly exclaiming, "Lion!"

"Pardon?"

Grinning both with triumph and the fact that Alex had said something as polite as 'pardon' to him, instead of the usual, 'what the hell did you say?'

"You're a lion cub." It was a statement that left no room for argument.

"Sure, whatever you say." The young spy replied, shrugging his shoulders. At least lion was better then wolf…

It was about half an hour later, after much talk about how to survive on the streets, that Alex finally managed to bring up the subject that was the whole point of his mission.

"I knew someone who ran away from home a few months ago. Saw him a couple of times, and then he just disappeared. No one's seen him since. What do you think could have happened to him?"

The lie, of course, came easy.

Blue shrugged, unconcerned. "Lots of things. He might have moved on to a new part of town. Might have left London all together. He could be lying low to keep out the police's way. Could just be bad luck that no one you know has spotted him. Then of course, there are the other reasons. Might have overdosed on something and died, or been kidnapped, or killed. Or just plain vanished. Anyone who lives on the streets knows at least one or two people who've been murdered or just never reappeared. And then of course there's books, like that Stone Cold, aren't there?"

Alex shrugged. "Never heard about it."

"And I've never read it myself, but apparently it's about some insane guy who goes round murdering homeless people in London to 'clean up the streets'. That sort of stuff is bound to give maniacs and psychos ideas…"

"Yeah." Alex agreed absentmindedly.

Soon the conversation left that grim topic as Blue told him why he had ended up on the streets. Turned out he had lived in an orphanage for most of his childhood after his heroin addict of a mother had died, only to run away from the children's home when he was twelve because he hated it so much. He had been living on the streets on and off since then.

Alex was glad he had taken the time to memorise the file MI6 had given him. Despite the fact they had seemed to think he wouldn't really need it, Alex found himself telling Blue the whole story. Alex was a good actor, capable of putting emotion and venom behind words that really meant nothing to him.

" …_And even though the bastard kept beating her up when he was drunk; which he practically always was, she wouldn't leave him. In the end I couldn't stand it any more. Mum didn't seem to care he had been hurting me for years too, only that his job brought in more money. So I left…"_

Blue nodded to himself every now and then, as though he was hearing a part of Alex's story that matched up perfectly with what so many others had told him.

"If I was one of those do-gooders trying to get kids off the street, I would say, 'Are you really sure it was that bad? Have you thought of how much your mother must be worrying about you? And other crap like that." He said it in an offhand, contemptuous way but it was clear he actually was wondering what the answers might be.

"Oh yeah, it was _that _bad."

A sudden thought occurred to Alex, a way to back up his story. Rebellion and anger flared up, aimed mostly at MI6. Well all he was doing was adding proof about his fake identity, right?

"I mean, look what he did."

Despite the cold, he pulled the layers of clothing covering his stomach up high enough to expose some of the cuts and scars that decorated his body as mementoes of his past missions and innocent childhood accidents***. Though the light was dim and Alex didn't let the small, white spider web like bullet wound show, Blue still let out a whistle and laughed in the sort of way people do when faced with something that makes them feel uncomfortable. "Wow man, I can't blame you for running away!"

"Yeah, I'm better off away from it all, aren't I?" It was not, however, his fake family that Alex was thinking of, but MI6, Mrs. Jones and Mr. Blunt to be exact.

***Thoug****h Yassen has often interpreted in different ways for fanfiction, he is evil. And that's not just my opinion; Mr. Horowitz created him as a sort of anti-Alex. Think about it, they both lost their parents at a young age and faced many difficulties. But where as Alex became a force for good, Yassen turned to the dark side.**

**Anthony Horowitz said he will be writing a book on Yassen about him when he was younger, exploring the nature of evil.**

****In the books, the launch of the Stormbreakers' was scheduled for April Fools Day, meaning that he must have been approached by MI6 late February/ early March.**

*****Most children, unless they are wrapped in bubble wrap or something, are going to end up with a scar or two. I myself have ten, but only two really count because seven are chicken pox scars and another, where I split my head open, is hidden in my hair somewhere.**

**Some people write about Alex not having any obvious scars on his face, but your face is the easiest place to scar because of how delicate your skin is, especially your lips. (Which is why, though it can't have been that bad an injury, you can still see a faint line on my face, part of which goes through my top lip where I caught my face on barbed wire as a child.)**

**I had completely forgotten about my other scar, (Where I cracked my head open on a slide and only realised when my hand came away from the painful spot all red with blood) until recently because my fringe covers it up, until my Mum happened to mention it and remind me of its existence.**

**I've gone right off topic here, what I meant to say is that children often end up with scars, and since Ian Rider took Alex off all over the world to do lots of dangerous sports, he is sure to have come away with lots of scars that have nothing to do with his missions.**

**I don't know how much of the stuff Anthony Horowitz told us is available on the internet, so if you know any of this stuff already, sorry.**

**First thing, he said this is going to be a very shocking book. Meaning, I'm guessing, that it will be both violent and give away a lot of secrets we never even realised where being hidden from us.**

**The second is probably the most important, it definitely was to me! And that is that Alex will not die. You heard me, ALEX WILL SURVIVE! YYYAAAAAYYYY! *Dances around crazily***

**Third hint, he gave us a world wide exclusive by reading out a little of the first chapter of Scorpia Rising. It was called Stealing Gods and took place in a museum in England. It followed one of the main bosses of Scorpia. I can't quite remember his name and I don't have a copy of Scorpia handy, but I think it sounded like Curst of Kirst, or something like that that started with a C or K.**

**He was being paid to go to the museum by the world's third richest man…**

**Anthony Horowitz also said…well, give me a nice review and I will give you the name of three different people. One of them will die, but which one?**

**Of course, thanks goes to With The What Now, (Who knows more then she will give away if she values her life, Mwahahahaha!) for trawling through my different chapters, assassinating all the mistakes she can find.**


	5. Oh Bloody, Bloody Hell

**Hello there, welcome to the chapter where something actually happens! **

**So be warned, there's swearing, fighting, blood and violence in this one- finally!**

**But before that, a bit more of the stuff Anthony Horowitz mentioned- and that is that Smithers is apparently going to play a more important part in the last book (not that he isn't important already, giving Alex all those gadgets that help keep him alive.)**

**He either said that the reader will find out who Smithers really is, or find out more about him, I can't quite remember which.**

**Also, there is a gadget that has been under our noses the whole time….**

**Here are my predictions- Smithers is really someone dead that Alex knows, in a fat suit and that the mystery gadget is…Smithers moustache! Sure, it hasn't been under **_**our **_**noses the whole time, but it's been under his!**

**One thing worth noting though, when I said there was a list of three people, one of which must die, I was wrong, because you need to add Smithers to that list as well.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Alex Rider, or any of the characters used in this Fanfiction that Anthony Horowitz created for the Alex Rider series. I don't own any of the others either, they belong to the voices that whisper ideas in my head.**

**Recap: Out on the streets of London on a mission for MI6, Alex is not what you would call, happy with his situation. But at least having Blue, a homeless older teen to talk to should stop him dying of boredom. Though of course, there are much more sticky ends then that that can be met out on the streets…**

Oh Bloody, Bloody Hell.

For the next week or so, Alex and Blue, by unspoken agreement, went off and did their own thing during the day, but returned around dusk behind the supermarket. They never actually went into the shop, and on arrival in the alley later on in the day, they were left undisturbed. Every night they heard the loud voices of the drunk and high as they staggered through the city, either in search of a good time or a place to throw up.

Blue, chatterbox that he was, was quick to voice his opinion on such people. Alex soon gathered that Blue hated pretty much every aspect of society, from the police, _"Always looking at me like I'm planning to murder their Grannies or about to give them fleas or something"_, to babies, "_People always wanted to adopt babies, but what about all the older kids who need adopting, huh?'_

He never seemed to spot Alex's amused smile as he ranted on about one subject or another. Though to be fair, fate had dealt Blue a pretty crappy hand in life and he had plenty of reasons to complain about. Alex enjoyed his company, even if his chattering did keep Alex up half the night, and he learnt a lot of tricks on how to survive living on the streets.

So one evening when Blue never turned up, Alex sorely missed him. The night seemed darker, more ominous and threatening without him.

The first night Alex forced himself not to panic. What good would it do anyway? He had probably just caught up with a friend of his and lost track of the time. And it wasn't as though he had known Alex very long, perhaps he stayed with one person a couple of days before going off to make new friends. All the same, he struggled to fall asleep easier than usual, even without Blue there to say, "You asleep yet, Cub? You were? Oops, sorry mate!"

The next day, his mindless wandering around London was a lot less mindless then usual as he walked up and down the different streets, scanning the crowds for the older teen.

By the second night, as hard as Alex tried to push it away, anxiety and loneliness bubbled up inside him. Memories he had tried to forget resurfaced, too.

By the time Alex finally fell asleep, cold and exhausted, his dreams were filled with blood and pain and screaming.

He never did see Blue again, and it was the next night, a Friday, that his whole world was turned upside down. Again.

Which really should have meant it was back to normal. But it wasn't, that would have been far too easy.

Fridays seemed to be about the worst for late night binge drinking. Alex guessed it must be because everyone would have at least two days afterwards to get over their hangovers before going back to work. If they worked at all, that is.

And so it was obvious, that if there was going to be trouble, it would happen on a Friday night.

Though Alex Rider never got a chance to check his watch, he was pretty sure it must have happened some time around midnight. He was awoken once again from his fitful sleep by a loud noise. Unlike before though, when the sounds had seemed far away or the next street, this time the disturbance was coming from the opening to the alleyway behind the shop where Alex was currently trying to sleep in. He froze, listening. Someone threw up noisily and a couple of others laughed. Watching the faint silhouettes, Alex guessed that there where at least six people there, and judging by their voices they where all young men, though probably a few years older then Alex himself.

One of them shouted at the two men laughing to 'shut the fuck up.' But it had little effect, they were too busy sniggering at their friend's plight as he retched up all the alcohol in his stomach, and everything else as well. Soon enough, an argument started between the swearing man and another person, who was giving as good as he got and displaying his very small vocabulary, which consisted mostly of curses.

Though Alex had of course heard them all before, he wished that the drunken gang would just move on. He was tired and their presence was making him feel decidedly uneasy.

Alex watched as the man who had been repeatedly sick collapsed unconscious to the ground, finally claimed by the vodka he had been dared to pour into his eye sockets for a quick buzz, and all the other alcoholic drinks he had consumed through more traditional means.

None of his companions seemed to notice, or if they did, they did nothing to help him.

They were too busy listening to the heated discussion, which Alex gathered was all about swearing, and which strip club they should visit. They kept chipping in with unhelpful comments that the other two men, high on alcohol, testosterone and probably drugs, were too busy arguing to hear.

They didn't even notice when one man, bored of the argument, muttered, "I'm off to the loo..." And headed unsteadily in Alex's direction.

Immediately Alex's thoughts went back to the story Blue had told him about a man who had once tried to pee on him. Though it had sounded funny at the time, Alex decided it was a fate he would really rather not suffer, and jumped quickly to his feet.

Behind him was a dead end, a brick wall too high to climb over. The only way out was past the drunken men, but he had barely got a couple of steps forward when the man near him staggered straight into him. His weight over balanced Alex, and it was only by twisting to the side that he managed to avoid hitting his head hard on a nearby wall. Instead he fell further, collapsing down onto the ground next to some rubbish bins. Alex couldn't help letting out a small cry of pain, his left hand had landed on a small but sharp piece of broken glass, slicing his palm open. Before he had time to get up and out of there, though, someone grabbed him by his coat and wrenched him unceremoniously to his feet.

"What did you do that for, you little bastard?" An angry face filled Alex's vision. He smelt the disgusting smell of alcohol on the man's breath. Without thinking, Alex reacted, bringing his right knee up, connecting with a very tender place, while wrenching the strangers' fingers away from his coat.

He took a precautionary step back, watching the man double up and swear repeatedly.

Angrily, Alex growled, "I didn't do anything!"

_Ah._ _Perhaps he should have said that before he retaliated…_

The one who had staggered into him stared at him incredulously. "I saw that! First you attack me, then Jamie." In a sudden mood swing, he went from surprised to angry. "Little shit…" He muttered as he stepped closer to Alex, trying to intimidate him. A second later though he took as step back as Alex brought his arms up into a fighting stance.

'_Looks like he's too much of a coward to take me on after what happened to that mate of his, Jamie' _It was a rather satisfying thought, one that made Alex smile grimly.

A second later though, the smile disappeared from his face as Alex detected a slight, _'whooshing' _noise_. _He ducked and pulled away to the left, hands meeting the red brick wall as a fist arched through the space his head had occupied just seconds ago.

Alex pushed himself away from the wall, leaving a bloody mark behind as he did, and swung round to face his new attacker.

Quickly, he took in the situation.

_Enemies?_ Two men behind him, the one he had hurt now just about over the worst of the pain and out for revenge. Three more in front, unhurt. Oh yeah, and one man out cold on the floor, probably laying in his own sick. Gross, but no immediate threat.

_Motivations?_ Five young, but fully grown men, intoxicated, already spoiling for a fight and eager to show off to each other. Plus, they thought him who had started on them.

_Fighting Ability?_ They looked quite street wise and strong, but Alex doubted they had had any real training when it came to fighting. Chances were one or two of them had gone to some sort of martial arts training for a couple of sessions, but lacked the discipline to stick with it. Besides, they where very, very drunk, meaning that though they would be even more aggressive and unpredictable then normal, their movements would most likely be slow, clumsy and ill thought out.

The men fanned out slightly, surrounding him. They glared at Alex unsteadily, and it was obvious that each and every one of them meant him harm.

One spoke up; staring down at Alex with his arms pulled back slightly, his whole stance an intimidating one.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

Alex ignored him, looking round at each man in turn; searching for a weak point he could break out through and escape, hopefully unharmed.

"Hey, I asked you…"

At that he swung forward, aiming to knock Alex down. Alex reacted quickly, fainting to his right before ducking to the left under the fist flying his way. Then he made a run for it. Unfortunately he didn't make it more then a couple of steps before another member of their little gang caught hold of his backpack. Alex hadn't expected anyone to react that quickly and jerked to a painful stop, the bags' straps digging into his shoulders, his feet actually leaving the ground for a second due to the sudden abrupt force of his stop.

Alex tried to shrug the bag off; he didn't really care what happened to it, getting away unharmed was much more important. Before he could escape his captor though, whoever was holding him used their free hand to punch him in the back of the head. Alex let out a groan of pain as an immediate pounding headache ensued. He was shoved forward onto the ground, but instead of collapsing he landed on his hands first, then a few moments later, his knees connected with the concrete with a thud. Straight away he swung around and leapt back onto his feet in one smooth movement, turning to face his attackers, fists raised.

Unfortunately for him, his attackers had already started moving, and he turned just in time get a punch in the chest. Luckily there was little power, only anger behind it and he retaliated by smashing his right hand into the side of the other man's face. The man swore from the pain and lashed out at Alex again, who took a step back to avoid the blow. A quick glance behind him showed Alex that he was now just a few paces away from the dead-end, and his only escape route lay beyond all five of the men.

Panic and adrenaline rushed through his body. How the hell had that happened? While trying to escape they seemed to have shifted nearer to the alleyway entrance, while throwing him further back into it. He was now in an even worse situation then before.

He saw another fist heading his way and dodged underneath it, running past one man, avoiding the blow from another, only to be stopped when the last two stood side by side, their bulk taking up most of the alley way.

Breathing hard, Alex tried to work out the best way of getting past them. That's all he needed to do, get past these last two guys and he could then run away like all of hells demons were pursuing him. He had no idea where he would go after that. Alex hadn't thought that far ahead, and anyway, it didn't really matter. All that mattered was getting away.

But he left it a few seconds too long, hesitated and let the others he had passed come up behind him. Not knowing where the next attack might come from now, he fell into a natural fighting stance again, his head whipping from side to side as he did so, trying to keep them all in sight.

One of the men spoke up. "Come on, what the hell's going on here?" It was clear that he was confused, and frustrated along with it. He had no idea why they were fighting some stupid little kid, or why he was still standing. It made him angry that alcohol clouded his brain too much for him to work things out clearly, and that the five of them still hadn't managed to beat up one teenager yet. They were part of a gang that they liked to think others were afraid of. Losing would do nothing for their image. Not that he actually expected to lose.

Still Alex said nothing, not knowing what to say anyway. And a moment or two later, violence reigned once again. Alex took another blow to the head, sending the world reeling before striking out with his foot, the next few seconds were a whirl wind of dodging, attacks and retaliation.

Alex was a much more skilled fighter, but in an enclosed space, fighting against five fully grown men, even if they were drunk, it came as no surprise to him when he found himself shoved once more to the rubbish strewn ground.

He managed to use his hands to stop his face coming into direct contact with the hard surface, but then a booted foot crashed down on his shoulder blades, knocking all the breath out of him and forcing him flat on his back.

Alex's right arm was trapped underneath him, his other sticking out to the side. A heavy foot stomped down on his arm, trying to break it but without success. It hurt though, and another blow quickly followed. Someone else kicked him in the back of the head, close to where he had been punched earlier.

All training seemed to abandon him in that moment as desperation, fear and panic kicked in. There was no time for coherent thought, just for instinct and the will to survive. Alex managed to pulled his left arm in tight to the side of his body before it was stomped on a third time, while lashing out with the only part of his body that he could; his legs. Kicking out madly he felt his feet connect a couple of times before his right leg caught the right shin of the man pinning Alex down. The man's leg buckled slightly, and for a second all his weight was leaning on Alex through the foot that was pinning him down, but in order to regain his balance he was forced to step away from Alex, freeing him.

Taking what might be his last chance, Alex used his tucked in arms to lever himself up, his left arm protesting at the sudden movement.

Another foot flew into view, one that Alex was unable to avoid. It crashed into his brow on the left side, a blow so strong that Alex felt his skin split open and his upward momentum turned to sideways as he was sent crashing to the right. His whole head pounding, and his vision oddly blurred from the kick as well as blood now trickling into his eyes, he struggled to get up, sure that any second now he would be hurt again.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was really just seconds, Alex finally managed to stagger to his feet, looking as though he was the one who had been drinking too much.

The whole world swayed around him and his head hurt so much he felt like it was going to explode, so when he first realised why he was no longer under attack, he thought he must be imagining things.

There was a new arrival to the alleyway, a figure dressed all in black.

After a short time of just standing still and wiping the blood away from his eyes, Alex was able to see clearly again.

_He's wearing a black cloak…well that's normal… _Alex thought vaguely to himself as the man (for it looked as though he must be a man because of his build and the way he moved) sprang into attack. Alex was soon aware that he was watching an incredibly powerful fighter, though he had no idea who it could possibly be.

An MI6 agent? It was a possibility; he sure was helping Alex out, fighting off his attackers. But since when had MI6 agents gone around in billowing cloaks? Maybe this guy was some sort of would-be vigilante with the ego or stupidity to try and pull off the whole super-hero thing. Though wouldn't a black cloak be more of a super villain's style?

Whoever he was, he sure knew what he was doing. Though he seemed to use no particular style of fighting, and so was unlikely to have had any real martial arts training, there was no doubting his prowess at fighting, his speed, his concentration and his strength.

Compared to him the young men who had attacked Alex stood no chance at all. They just weren't in the same league.

Alex winced as he heard the crack of bone. Those guys might have been his enemy, but the ruthless and merciless manner in which the cloaked man was dealing with them would make anyone flinch.

He watched as the figure grabbed a hold of the hood of the last remaining opponent, the other four still conscious had fled as best they could, swearing and screaming in rage and pain, calling back threats that they could not hope to actually substantiate. The man who had collapsed earlier was still laying flat out just beyond the alleyway. Luckily for him he had missed the whole thing, though who knows what he would think when he awoke in the morning to find himself all alone. If he woke up at all, that is.

Alex stood still, seemingly unable to move as he watched the stranger deal with the last gang member. What he saw made his eyes open in shock, his aching brain fire out other explanations and his insides turn to lead.

Without ceremony the cloaked man swung the youth around while he cursed and flailed to get away, grabbed hold of his jacket at chest level, smashed his back into the wall behind him, and then in one swift movement, twisted his own head to one side and forward, towards his struggling enemy, and…and…

Alex couldn't believe what he was witnessing, it was impossible, and yet there was no doubt about it, his saviour ripped the other mans throat out as easily as someone could take a bite out an apple. The blood was horrendous, pumping out so fast and violently that it actually splashed up the opposite wall.

The victim's cries faded away to rasping gurgles, a terrible sound that Alex would never, for as long as he lived, forget.

He watched as the now dead man was released and collapsed in a bloody heap on the floor.

The black cloaked murderer turned to face Alex, and without thinking about it, he took an unconscious step backwards.

Though it was dark in the alleyway, with just the light spilling in from its one opening, Alex could just about make out a pale face with short black or brown hair, and eyes which seemed to glow red.

He blinked several times and wiped his good arm across his face in an attempt to rid himself of any blood which might still have been impairing his vision. But it made no difference; he could still see bright red eyes. Perhaps they were contact lenses? But after witnessing what had just happened, it wouldn't take Alex much persuading to believe that they weren't.

Shifting so that his weight was distributed evenly on each foot, his hands in loose fists at his side, Alex called out, "Who are you?" Or, at least, he had tried to say it loudly. Though he was pleased to find his voice level and calm sounding, the words still came out quite quietly. All the same, they filled the now silent alleyway, the noises of the city beyond forgotten and of no consequence.

"Me? I'm just the guy who saved your life…aren't you going to thank me?"

Though the cloaked man had no discernable accent, he spoke each word carefully as though savouring each syllable. There was also a sort of mocking, amused sound to his voice that immediately made Alex feel as though he was trying to belittle him.

Finding he couldn't look at those creepy red eyes anymore, Alex instead glanced down to his left, watching his fist tightening as the only visual sign of his unease and annoyance. His left arm still really hurt, painful to move. He could feel a dozen other aches and pains as well, and just wished his head would stop pounding as much so he could start to think straight…

"Yeah, thanks."

"You don't sound like you mean it…" Tones of fake disappointment crept into the stranger's voice. Something else was different this time too… Alex snapped his head up quickly as he noticed how much closer the cloaked man's voice now sounded.

There, now less then two metres away, glowed the red eyes.

Alex took another step back.

_What the hell?_ How had he managed to get closer in the short time he was looking away, and without making a single noise?

His heart, already beating hard, sped up. The cool mask that had rarely slipped in the past, even when faced with death, was rapidly abandoning the teenage spy, tendril after tendril of it being ripped away by the man in front of him.

But was he a man? Not in the sense of gender, the way he fought and talked labelled him as man, but he seemed something more then human. Or less…

"…no matter, you still owe me a favour, wouldn't you say?" It occurred to Alex that this was the voice of someone in complete and utter control. He was just toying with Alex, and he knew from what had happened to the last man the stranger had faced, that for all his fighting skills, he had come up against an opponent he had no hope of beating. And this time he couldn't even use his enemies' weakness against him, as he had done with Nile, for he had no idea if the cloaked figure even had any weaknesses.

He was dressed all in black under the cloak, meaning that though he must be covered in blood, it couldn't be seen in this bad light. However, quite a bit had splashed onto his large, pale hands and face.

And it seemed as though he had only just noticed. Without taking his sanguine red eyes off Alex, he lifted one hand to his mouth and licked the blood off the back of it.

Inside Alex shuddered with revulsion, but he didn't let his disgust show on the outside, even though his mask was crumbling away.

"Wouldn't you say?" The stranger repeated and Alex could detect that an element of threat had crept into his words.

He took a step forward, Alex took a step back.

"Oh come on, I'm not going to hurt you…much."

"I don't know who the hell you are, but…"

"I told you, I'm just the guy who saved your life…" The cloaked figure interrupted, "…but I'm also the one who's going to take it away from you. I do so hope you don't mind." His over-polite words were full of malice, and as he started to smile, a wide and toothy smile which held about as much warmth as a shark's, Alex took another step back.

For the second time that night, the teenage spy viewed something that would challenge any ones view of the world, even that of someone who had been caught up in as many impossible situations as him.

For he swore that in the half-light, fangs glinted in the strangers mouth.

Alex stared, his brain trying to tell him he was imagining things, or else they were fake, as well as a mad barrage of other explanations as his rational mind did all it could to deny the truth.

"What the hell…" Alex muttered to himself in shock.

"Oh so you noticed? Want a closer look?" If a tiger had been able to talk to its injured and cornered prey moments before it met its inescapable fate, this was just how it would have sounded.

Before he had chance to reply or react in anyway, suddenly, in the time it took Alex to blink, the cloaked man was right in front of him.

Letting out a soundless gasp when any other person would most likely have screamed, Alex instinctively tried to get as far away from those ivory, impossibly long and sharply pointed teeth, those crazed red eyes and the smell of spilt blood.

But as he stumbled backwards, his head and then back suddenly came into contact with the alley-way's dead end which he had inadvertently been backing away into all along.

"Urgh…" Why was the world conspiring against him to give him permanent head damage tonight?

Large fists came out of nowhere and pinned him to the wall by his arms. Alex retaliated by trying to knee him in the groin, but he couldn't move his legs enough, for the stranger was using his own knees to stop him. He resorted to trying to kick his shins, and when this did nothing to get him out of his predicament, he started to squirm and thrash around as best he could in a wild attempt to free himself. But once again it had no effect. The way in which the man was leaning on him should have made him vulnerable to being pushed over backwards, but despite all Alex's attempts he refused to budge or flinch. Instead he patiently watched Alex as he tried to free himself, waiting for him to tire.

"Let me go, let me go, let me go!" Alex growled desperately. He knew that there was no chance his capture would obey his demands, but the muttered words helped him focus and keep hold of his sanity while everything else in the world went crazy.

But eventually, the last of his energy seemed to desert him and he hung his head slightly, to his right, his eyes tight shut, as though trying to block out the whole situation. Alex's breath was coming out in short, sharp bursts, his chest heaving, his legs betraying his fear by shaking. As well as fear, he was filled with anger and shame, directed mostly at himself. He was Alex Rider, for Gods sake! He had survived so, so much in the past, only to be defeated now, it seemed.

Alex expected the man to say something, most likely gloat about having him trapped and at his mercy, but instead he acted.

Suddenly a piercing, burning pain blossomed on the left side of his neck. Alex cried out in surprise and pain, instinctively trying to shrug his shoulder up to the left and tilt his head that way in order protect the searing part of his exposed neck. But in the split second it had taken for his body to react to the danger, there was nothing to react to. And then he found himself roughly thrown to the litter-strewn ground.

Alex curled up, both hands clutching the side of his throbbing neck. The burning sensation was spreading; he could feel it creeping through his body.

The spy's mind was racing and his body fired off the message, _'Poison, poison!'_

But the part of him that was still able to think straight despite all that was happening, told him one simple truth, _'You have been bitten.' _Then it continued, in less certain tones,_ 'And no matter how crazy it seems, I'm thinking vampire. Yeah, knew you would laugh, but what else could it be, a viper hiding in his mouth? It's the only explanation, and it freaks me out, so I'm out of here. Good luck."_

Except that part of his mind didn't really abandon him altogether, and somewhere else, a further analysis of his new wound was going on. If it was really was a vampire bite (he felt crazy just considering that ludicrous situation), it certainly didn't feel like the traditional 'two small marks' type bite, but much more widespread. Though he didn't have time and a mirror to study the wound, and so didn't know exactly what had happened, there were in fact two main marks. The stranger's thin, elongated canines had left shallow but ragged slashes in his neck, and a few other teeth, also sharper than a normal humans, had pierced or grazed his skin in several places.

A hand grabbed hold of his shoulder, fingernails digging into his skin roughly he was pulled onto his back and then released. Without making the conscious decision to, Alex cried out from shock at the contact. Or at least he tried to. No noise would come out. Panicking, he repeatedly tried to utter a sound, his eyes wide and one arm still pressed against his neck. The other was reaching for the wall behind him as he scrambled back to his feet and away from the cloaked man.

The hot sensation had by now swept fully across his chest. Alex wondered if it was in someway connected with his sudden inability to make a sound. His question was answered after he made a short and futile attempt at escaping.

He got barely a few steps before the stranger was, without warning, suddenly right in front of him. Alex came to a sudden stand-still and for a second their eyes met, Alex's serious brown ones wide with incredulity and fear, the strangers crimson red, staring back, a hint of insanity encapsulated in them.

"Don't even try to cry out. The venom stops you from speaking. Means we never have to worry about our prey escaping, even if we weren't strong and fast enough to stop that. But all that screaming attracts unwanted attention, now doesn't it? So if we want to play with our food before killing them, we give them a special little nip first…"

Alex was right; the vampire was toying with him. Anger ignited inside him, and before the stranger could say anything else, Alex struck.

First he swung his left fist forward, quickly but with no power, followed almost simultaneously by his right fist with as much power behind it as he could muster.

But neither blow landed. He had been expecting it, and by watching closely he saw the cloaked man move. Though fast, it was the darkness that had made his speed seem so inhuman…though of cause, that was what it truly was.

He already had one foot slightly in the air. Pivoting on his other foot, he brought his knee up before snapping out the rest of his leg just before reaching his target.

The top of his foot and ankle whacked into the vampire's side.

His elation at hearing a sudden, indrawn breath of pain was short lived as the stranger caught his leg before it made it back down to the ground, and wrenched it up again.

Alex felt himself falling backwards but could do nothing to balance such a sudden change in momentum. Down he fell, on the cold ground once more.

Suddenly there was a weight on his stomach as the vampire sat on him before he had time to move. Both arms were yanked above his head and kept there by grips of iron.

Realising his legs were still free, Alex went about trying to kick his capturer in the back. But exhausted from his earlier fight, it obviously had no effect, so it wasn't much later before his legs felt too much like lead to move and he desisted.

Once he was still, the stranger lowered his head towards Alex, who flinched away, trying to move his head as far away as possible, thinking he was about to be bitten.

"My, you are a little fighter, aren't you? Never known one like you before. It's amusing… but a bit annoying… Those who annoy me don't tend to live very long." Suddenly his teeth were grazing Alex's neck. He shivered, and screwed his eyes up tight, but there was no pain.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes up and looked around, his head still twisted away to the side. Once again their eyes made contact. Those blood red orbs made Alex feel sick. They were so unnatural, so wrong…

"Never known one with blood like yours… You know, how someone's blood tastes and smells all depends on what sort of life they've lived. The more pain, suffering and hardship, the sweeter it is. You must have had a pretty crappy life kid, most people twice your age have blood no where near as nice as yours, even those who have been in the army. But your suffering will soon be over, don't worry."

Alex did nothing as he listened to the vampire's one sided conversation, hoping that the time would give him a chance to recover, and possibly escape… somehow.

But he never really stood a chance, and deep down he knew that.

The stranger stared down, watching a pulse beat in Alex's exposed neck. So tempting…

It was the opposite side to the one he had bitten and he could see two straight scars on it, one above the other. The bottom one was thin and very faint, the one above more obvious and thicker. They were most likely the reason Alex had never been attacked in the past; at first glance they looked like the markings humans were given when under the protection of vampire royalty. They meant one of two things, that the human had been granted special favour by a royal, or more likely that they were their next meal. Either way normal vampires were not allowed anywhere near them. But it was clear at this distance that the scars were mere coincidence.

Not that the royal mark would have stopped him anyway, he had finally crossed the thin line of insanity and no longer cared how many rules he had broken. All the killings and most of the disappearances were down to him, including Blue's. He picked on the homeless because they were the least likely to be missed and usually had painful pasts that had lead to them being out on the streets to begin with.

Alex felt long fingers caress his neck and shudder, his jaw clenched and violent shudders wracking his whole body. It wasn't just fear now; it was the silencing poison that had reached the very tips of his fingers and toes, making him feel as though he was on fire on the inside.

"Soon over, soon over. I might have liked to keep you a little longer, you know, but I bit you so soon…didn't want you crying out, you see. Got to finish you off soon or you'll start to turn into a vampire. Wonder what your blood would taste like then… No, you would be too much hassle. The sweeter and stronger the blood, the sweeter and stronger the vampire, did you know that?"

The cloaked mans voice echoed down into the deep well Alex seemed to be stuck in, so far from the outside world.

Then something happened to shock Alex fully back into the waking world, another stab of pain in his neck. This time it was just a quick nip, but it left a much deeper wound then before. Then there was a third bite as the monster latched his teeth over the bloody wounds he had just inflicted, making the blood flower easier.

This time the bite didn't burn, but seemed to tug at him, as though it was slowly tugging strands of his soul away from his body. After a few seconds though, all the pain seemed to vanish. Alex felt so empty, so sleepy. But then he slowly became aware of the burning sensation becoming stronger and stronger. With every passing minute it seemed to get a little worse.

Using all of the willpower Alex could muster, he managed to surface once again into the real world. The spy side of him snapped into gear, _think, think! How do I get out of this one? _He ran through his possible options, his mind automatically jumping to the category; 'Gadgets.' Then a possible solution occurred to him, like a long awaited life boat finally appearing over the next wave_. My jacket!_

What had Smithers said to do? He couldn't remember the specifics, but knew that it was all down to the rubber casing of a button.

Desperately he wiggled his right arm, trying to free it, and to his amazement the vampire readily released it. Perhaps he no longer thought Alex could do anything to retaliate now. Not that anything had helped up until now. Hopefully that was about to change.

His bloody fingertips scrabbled round on the grimy ground along his right side until it came to the front of his jacket, unzipped and lying alongside him. _Thank_ _God._ If the jacket had been zipped up it would have been impossible to reach.

He quickly located the precious disk of rubber and found that it swivelled round easily in his grip. Using his thumb he twisted it round and round repeatedly, but nothing happened.

New despair crashed down on him like his life boat being swamped just before it reached him.

Then he realised that he might be twisting it the wrong way, so he tried again, turning it clockwise. Round and round it went until Alex had almost given up again, but then suddenly pain erupted one his neck once again, as the vampire wrenched his fangs away, letting out a high-pitched and inhuman cry of pain. So strong was the electric shock that the stranger flung himself backwards, twitching and yelping in pain. The shock was supposed to have been strong enough to kill a human. But then again, this wasn't a human he was dealing with.

This was his chance to escape, but it was so hard. Just scrambling to his feet felt like climbing a mountain. But he managed it. _Come on, one foot in front of the other! _Ever step was slow and painful, but he had to keep going. Fear gave him a little strength, and the ever-present desire to keep on living gave him some more. He was almost running now. Behind him he could hear the vampire swearing and writhing on the ground. But who knew how long it would be before he was after Alex again?

And then he was out of the alleyway. Just that small achievement filled him with hope. Now he broke out into the nearest thing to a sprint as he could muster, though he only had a vague idea of where he was going. All he could think of was finding a reasonably busy place where he could mingle with the crowd and escape.

But it was so late at night…or was it early in the morning? Alex wasn't entirely sure.

He considered for a second simply hiding in another alleyway, but he was sure the vampire would track him down somehow, most likely via the blood he was currently covered in. All his own. He felt so, so weak and the wound on his neck continued to bleed, leading to even more blood loss. He needed help, and soon or he wasn't going to make it through the night, vampire or no vampire.

Then suddenly he heard voices, loud giggles of drunken women. He burst out onto a road, bright neon lights advertising the clubs and light night shops lining it. This was the perfect place.

Despite the time, groups of intoxicated people, mostly under thirty, were spilling out onto the road.

He ran straight through them, hearing several drunken screams and laughs as a group of women on a hen night spotted him covered in blood. Some obviously thought it was fake but quite a few realised it wasn't and shrieked in shock at the young, bloody teenager who had suddenly appeared in their midst.

"_As you can see behind me, the effects of all night drinking has not led to a 'coffee culture' as the government presumed it would, but instead wide-spread vulgarity and drunkenness as younger generations take advantages of the cheap and readily available alcohol. _

_Each night paramedics have to deal with countless patients who have suffered negative effects due to alcohol, from unconsciousness to cuts and bruises where other intoxicated people have attacked them. This puts a terrible strain on the NHS, which…"_

The middle-aged reporter standing in front of the camera and its crew paused mid-sentence as the screams and shrieks that had been off in the distance (and had been going on pretty much all night), suddenly grew much closer. Then out of the milling crowd of people behind the reporter, many waving their arms around in an attempt to get spotted on TV, burst Alex Rider.

He was a shocking sight, a small 15 year old boy with blood all down his front and his arms, a look of glazed fear on his face.

The camera focused in on the boy for a second, before with a start he realised he was being filmed and shot off out of sight.

The unperturbed reporter, who had once been a war correspondent and so, had seen many terrible things in his time, continued with his spiel, _Which is already under enough strain due to recent funding cuts by the government…"_

On and on Alex ran, still not sure what he was looking for. Safety? Sanctuary? But where could they be found? What could save him from a vampire? For he was sure he was still being followed. He hadn't seen even a glimpse of a black cloak, but instincts told him that that was one predator that wasn't going to allow his prey to escape so easily.

It was getting harder and harder to keep moving. It was as though his whole body was seizing up. The pain and loss of blood made it hard to think and all the time the heat was rising up inside him while on the outside he shivered again and again.

And then suddenly he heard a screech of tires and looked round at the road next to him. A black car had just pulled up next to him erratically. There was a clunk as a man pushed the driver-side door open.

"Alex!" There was horror and worry in the mans voice.

"Fox?..." Alex whispered, confused. How had he found him?

"Alex, get in, we've got to take you to a hospital!"

Ben Daniels grabbed hold of him and Alex allowed himself to be bundled into the backseat of the car. Though his brain was struggling to catch up with what was happening, he felt relief course through him. Could it possibly be that he was safe now?

He collapsed onto the synthetic material covered seats, and without really thinking about it, did up his seat belt. If he had noticed himself doing it up, no doubt he would have let out a hollow laugh. What did a seatbelt matter after all he had been through?

But as it was he was too busy looking behind them as the car pulled away from the pavement. Something had made him glance back, and there on the road, several metres behind where Alex had got into the car, and getting further away all the time, was a figure cloaked in black with blazing red eyes. He simply stood there, arms at his side, watching Alex as they drove away. Though it was dark where he was standing, Alex felt for a second as though he had seen huge, solid looking shadows dancing behind and above the vampires head. But when he blinked again, he couldn't make out anything but darkness.

For several minutes he just stared behind them, watching out for his reappearance. But as the seconds past, Alex found himself sinking further and further down the seat, until he gave up and turned round to sit in the seat properly.

"What the hell happened to you, Alex?" Ben asked without turning round.

"Got attacked…" Alex muttered. The whole world was starting to fade out of view, blurring into darkness.

"By what, a pack of wolves?" There was no response. "Alex? Alex! Can you hear me?"

But he couldn't. Alex had finally succumbed to exhaustion, pain, blood loss and unconsciousness. His battered body had collapsed to the side, kept in place as they went round bends in the roads only by his seatbelt.

"Alex! Hold on, I'm taking you to the hospital!"

"_He's collapsed…yes, taking him there right now…lots of blood…doesn't look good…no idea, didn't have time to tell me…yes, fainted…dead?.." _

**Phew. Sorry it's taken so long for me to finish this chapter, but you can see why (I hope!) Its over 8 thousand words altogether, about double my last longest chapter!**

**Though I know where I've planned it to go from here, I'm curious as to what other people would like/ think is going to happen next. Even if it clashes with my current plans I might be able to get in aspects that other people would like to see happen!**

**By the way, if your wondering, in the books Alex manages to get a cut on his neck from some branch or other while training with the SAS.**

**Later on in the same book, I think, a bullet grazes his neck. So that's where those two random scars came from XD**

**Thank you for taking the time to read this chapter, and why not review while you're at it? ;D**

**By the way, I'm thinking about putting what Anthony Horrowitz said about the Stormbreaker film in the next chapters AN's, why there's never going to be another film, why Sabina was in it, etc.**

**Does that sound interesting to anybody?**


	6. Watch Me Crash and Burn

**Thank you to those who reviewed and showed a keen interest in finding out what happens next. This is for you! Hope you like it ^^**

**By the way, I've had my GCSE Results back and they are really good! Got two A*s in English and a couple of others too, three As, one B, one C and….an F… In French… see why I wanted to drop it?**

**Disclaimer: The Alex Rider series and characters all belong to the awesome Anthony Horowitz. But as of now, all your souls belong to me!**

**Recap: Oh come on, the last chapter was so cool surely you don't need this? XP what's that you say? You've got the memory of a gold fish? Oh…alright then...**

**While posing as a homeless teenager in order to get to the bottom of a string of odd disappearances and nasty deaths, Alex manages to find out who…or should that be, what's behind it all. But the discovery comes at the expense of life as he knew it. And even being blackmailed into incredibly dangerous situations is surely better then this!**

Watch Me Crash and Burn.

Until around a year ago, until, in fact, Alex had first started working for MI6 after his Uncles death, Jack Starbright had rarely bothered to watch the news.

The TV news had never been of any interest to her, and the British version annoyed her. It was even duller then the American, though she had to admit it generally covered what was going on in the rest of the world more then the news in the USA ever had. Same with the newspapers, which also had not been of much interest to her till Alex had first been endangered at Government orders.

Jack figured that the British news reports must talk about other countries more because they had so little of their own to report. It was a very small country after all, unlike America, which generally had enough of its own problems to tell the public without bothering about what the French President had been caught doing this week.

But now, whenever Alex went away, Jack watched every news report and read every paper she could get her hands on, searching for news of Alex.

She knew it was pretty pointless; anything involving a teenager illegally employed by MI6 was going to get hushed up. There were events she had read about that she suspected Alex might be involved, but until this evening she had never actually had proof.

It was 10 o'clock and Jack was planning to go to bed straight after watching the news. In fact, she almost fell asleep watching it. The French leader reportedly being videoed in bed with a 17 year old prostitute was not earth shattering news to her. But what she saw a few minutes after, however, was.

By then it had switched to the more local news, and was showing a report on the problems of 24-hour drinking in London that had been filmed the night before.

Eyes, glazed over with disinterest suddenly snapped into focus and her heart started to pound as Jack caught sight of the one person she had been desperate for news on, but had hoped she would never see in a news report.

"Alex!" She couldn't help shouting his name out loud. She clapped her hands to her mouth, though not to stop any sound escaping, as there was no one in the house she could disturb, but because of shock.

He was only on screen for a second or two, but there was no doubting who it was, or that he was in trouble. He had clearly been covered in blood, for goodness sake!

Without thinking about it, she flung herself down onto the carpet in front of the TV, her eyes scanning the blurry faces visible on screen as best she could this close up, desperate for another glimpse of her charge.

A panicked sob escaped her, and as the news switched to another item, Jack let her body slide onto the carpet below the TV. There she curled into a ball, her hands entwined in her hair, pulling at it as though trying to block out the mental pain with physical instead.

Jack stayed like that for roughly 5 and a half seconds before leaping to her feet and dashing into the hallway.

Snatching up the phone she dialled 91… and then paused. Did 911 even work in England? Probably… but by the time she had decided to press a second 1, the screen had gone dark. Slamming the phone back down into its holder its holder so she could start again, Jack picked it up once more and furiously dialled 999.

"I want to…I need to talk to…" As she was asked to pick which service she required, Jack faltered. If she requested to talk to the head of MI6, what chance would she possibly have of getting through?

"…The Police!" It was a place to start at least….

…_~*AR-OBTS*~…_

_There was an agonising pain in his mouth. Scorpions, sent by Scorpia were using their stingers and pincers to try and wrench his teeth out. Jack was there with him, quietly reading a book in what he knew was supposed to be their living room, though it looked nothing like the real thing. Alex kept trying to shout out to her that if she didn't run, the scorpions would get her too. But no sound escaped his lips, only bubbles of blood which were welling up inside his throat from a wound on the side of his neck. The scorpions, which had now mysteriously disappeared , were to blame for this too. And then, suddenly. Jack glanced up and Alex reeled back in shock at the sight of her two burning red eyes, far too large for her face. Or at least, he tried to move away, but he was frozen solid._

_When he finally found he could move, though it felt like moving through thick treacle, weighing and slowing him down horribly, she was gone. On the wall someone had written a message in what looked like fine red ink, though Alex Rider some how knew that it was in fact blood. Try as he might, he couldn't read what the words said, his vision blurred whenever he tried to focus on it. Then he realised why; the room, (which had transformed into more of an office then a living room), was full of smoke. In the distance he could hear a fire alarm beeping, the sound getting louder and louder. He had to escape! But his limbs seemed so heavy and he found he could barely walk at all. In desperation he dropped to his hands and knees, trying to crawl, but that was barely any faster…_

"It…he's waking up, sir!" Called a voice, and suddenly Alex snapped out of his dream. The beeping continued however, as did the pain in his mouth. And every other part of him was in agony as well, feeling as though his insides were trying to burst through his skin. He was burning up at a temperature far too high to be possible. And suddenly he discovered that he was now able to utter sounds, in the form of a tortured scream. It was the only outlet he had for all the pain, pain like he had never known it before. For, as clouded as his mind might be at the moment, stopping him from thinking straight, he still had enough wits about him to realise that the restraints on movement in his dreams were just as bad in real life. If this hell was real life, that is, and not another nightmare. Despite the strong bands holding him down by his chest, wrists, stomach, legs and ankles, he still managed to writhe in agony, his head twisting from side to side, his jaw locked, his eyes tight shut and his fists clenched.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Another loud scream escaped Alex's lips. Then his head swung forward and his eyes snapped open, spy instincts battling through the pain, telling him he must try and find out were he was.

His eyes immediately alighted on a face just a few steps away from him, that of a frightened man wearing a long white lab coat. His stance was that of a human with no fighting training preparing for flight or fight. His centre of gravity was low, his legs spaced out, shoulder width apart, elbows bent, ready to help propel him either way if he chose to run, or to swing into attack if he chose to make a stand.

"Sir!" The man shouted, glancing quickly to his right.

"_Wu…what's he scared of?..." _Alex wondered weakly as his head collapsed forward again, his body too weak to even support it.

Every breath felt like his lungs were clapped in steel and the pain was so bad that his breath hitched and gasped within his throat.

But still, he had to know what was going on. Part of his dream flashed back to him. What if he was a prisoner of Scorpia? Dread gripped his heart and with a huge effort, he managed to roll his head to the side slightly. Doing so hurt his neck, as though stretching a new wound, but he couldn't actually feel any damage to his skin. It seemed to be oddly deeper then that.

Opening his eyes wasn't quite as hard, but they still seemed like lead to him and burned like the rest of his body. From this angle he could see he was tied down to some sort of strange looking hospital bed. It was at a slanted angle so that his head was much higher then his toes, which were about half a metre off the ground. Alex wasn't sure what the ties that were holding him down were made of, but they were tough and unlikely to snap.

His eyes flickered around the room, taking in beeping machinery and surgical white walls and ceiling. There was a catheter stuck in his right arm which he hadn't even noticed till then, and other wires attached to him here and there, which he hadn't been able to feel due to the prickling, burning sensation that swamped every part of him, including his skin.

By moving his head a fraction to the side Alex could see that someone had changed his clothes to a simple white T-shirt and shorts.

"_Urgh, what is it about swapping the poor sod-of-a-victim's clothes?"_

Suddenly Alex realised that what had been distant and hurried footsteps had become much closer, and even more hurried ones.

"_Heavy business shoes, new by the sounds of it, worn by a large man if the footfalls are anything to go by…"_

The sound stopped and was instead replaced by the beeping of a security code. A door opened, but not the one to the room he was in. Then an electronic voice intoned dully, "Scanning in progress, please remain still." And then a few seconds later another man rushed into the room.

Alex's pupils flicked to the corner of his eyes to watch the new arrival join the first man.

"Look, he's awake sir!"

"Yes, I can see that." The second man snapped. He was older looking, with glasses, clear hair loss and an angry look on his pale face.

He stepped closer to Alex, too close.

The spy suddenly realised he could smell…something. It took him a second to realise that he could somehow scent the blood flowing through the man's veins.

He barely had time to think, _Huh, what? _Before something exploded through his mind. Pure savage instinct took control and drove all sane thoughts from his head.

Alex snarled, and with lightning speed, swung his head round and snapped at the man. He was breathing hard, as before but now all the pain and burning was gone, except in his throat. He just wanted to…no, there was no 'want'. Alex had lost the ability to think using the word 'want', or to in fact think at all, all there was a terrible, all consuming need. For blood.

Some tiny part of the boy, hidden away at the back of his mind was shocked and disgusted at this revelation. _"Blood? No…no way! No, no, nooooooo!"_

But then the very last essence of what made Alex, Alex, was snuffed out, till only a terrible snarling creature was left behind to control his body.

He strained at the ties that kept them in place, using all the strength that suddenly shot through his body to try and escape and kill.

But who ever had designed them had known what they were doing, and all that happened was that they dug in deep into his flesh, leaving raw red marks he barely noticed at the time.

The two men had recoiled as soon as the change had taken place.

"It's reverted!" A seemingly distant voice cried. "More Encalment needed!"

The words meant nothing to Alex, they were just the twitterings of silly little creatures, ones that were his prey. Who cared what prey said? It was there only to be eaten!

But then, as suddenly as the rage and thirst started, it began to fade away. He grew weaker and weaker again. As soon as he realised that they were pumping some sort of drug into his veins, via the catheter, he tried to rip it away. But it was already too late; his limbs were simply too heavy to move. He let out a final animalistic growl as he sunk back into a troubled and heavily drugged sleep.

…_~*AR-OBTS*~…_

Jack slammed the house phone down for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath to try and calm herself, but as she did so, the grainy image of Alex had had appeared on the news the night before flashed into her head. Her fear for him and anger at MI6 rushed through her and she smashed her fist into the phone holder. The whole thing toppled off the desk and onto the floor, the phone clattering out of its recharger.

Jack stared down at it, fists clenched. What if she had broken it? What if Alex or someone who knew what had happened to him was trying to get hold of her right now? Quickly she snatched the two items up and scrambled to fit the phone back into its little niche. She let out a sigh of relied as she heard a familiar 'beep' which told her the phone was charging. Its little screen flashed on, showing it was still working. But there was no ringing sound, or new messages, just one old one.

She pressed a button which would play it for her. "You. Have. One. Old. Message. Message. One." A disjointed feminine voice informed her.

"Beeeeeep."

Then it started. Though Jack had listened to it so many times since it had arrived earlier today that she could have quoted it word for world, she still strained her eras to try and pick up anything she could have missed last time round.

"Alex Rider is safe and recovering in hospital. Please do not try to contact us again or involve a third party. May we remind you of your current situation and our on going wish that Mr. Rider stays anonymous?"

They caller hadn't left a name and Jack didn't recognise the voice, but there was no doubt that MI6 was behind it.

She played it once more, carefully analysing each sentence in the short message.

"_Alex Rider is safe and recovering in hospital."_ So the higher-ups had got wind of Jack ringing everyone she could to try and get in contact with MI6, and that she had turned up at their Head Quarters at the Royal and General Bank four times already, the first time at around 11pm last night, asking after Alex. This message had been left on her answer phone while she had been there for the third time. Jack was sure it had purposefully been left while she was out so that they wouldn't have to listen to her. She wasn't sure if she could get away with going there for a fifth time. She had already been thrown out three times that morning for upsetting the customers and had got no results from it.

The thing that bugged her about the first line was that they said he was safe in hospital, but didn't mention to her what hospital he was in. She had tried all the local ones to no avail. Why were they keeping his whereabouts hidden from her? They hadn't in the past when he was in hospital. They hadn't had any problems with her visiting either, why was it different this time round? It couldn't possibly be worse then a near-fatal bullet wound, could it? They said he was safe…were they lying? It wouldn't surprise Jack, nothing did these days.

" _Please do not try to contact us again or involve a third party." _They obviously didn't like all the fuss she was making and were scared that she would tell someone else about Alex while trying to find out more about what was happening to him. They didn't need to tell her, in her desperation she had tried to explain to a couple of police officers, but they simply hadn't believed her. There was no one she could turn to…

"_May we remind you of your current situation and our on-going wish that Mr. Rider stays anonymous?"_

And then there was that icing on the cake, the loosely veiled threat. Jack guessed that they were referring to her Visa when her 'current situation' was mentioned. They were threatening to deport her if she did anything else to displease them.

And finally there was 'Our on-going wish' that what Alex had been forced into didn't become public. Any other person with less knowledge of how MI6 behaved might have thought that 'our' went that they really didn't want the truth known, and would have believed this gave them a threat to sue against them. But Jack knew from what they had said to Alex previously that, though they would rather his story was not told, it would be him who suffered, and not them if it ever came to light.

"They've got me backed up into a corner, no one to turn to." Jack murmured to herself, not even noticing that the words were spoken out loud. But she was wrong. There was one person inside MI6 who cared about what happened to Alex and had in fact already done what he could to make contact with her. She just hadn't checked her E-mails yet…

**So sorry for the amazingly short chapter, but I wanted to make sure I at least got something posted before I started back at school. I've still got until the 6****th**** of September, but a lot of things are happening before then, I'm not sure how much time I will get to work on this. Hopefully it won't be long before another chapter is up though!**

**Oh, I said I was going to talk about what Anthony Horowitz said about Stormbreaker, wasn't I?**

**Right.**

**He wrote the script and of cause had to make changes from the book to make it into movie, but there was some American guy who's basically to blame for everything wrong with it.**

**I'm not saying he ruined it because he's an American working on a mostly British made film, but because I can't remember his name, only that he lives in the USA…**

**Mr. Horowitz was so annoyed with him that there's a movie director in one of the books, (Crocodile Tears?), who ends up on fire with exactly the same name as that guy. (That's how Anthony Horowitz gets revenge on people, by putting them in books and then making something horrible happen to them XD)**

**This guy said that there needed to be a teenage girl in it for other girls to relate to, though of cause most girls hate Sabina, not relate to her! So that's why she appears in Stormbreaker.**

**Anthony Horowitz wanted to make it a bit darker and more violent, a 12A rating at least…but he wasn't allowed so it's a crummy PG…**

**And that one guy is also to blame for the fact that there will never be a sequel. He stopped it from being properly released in cinema in America, and films can't get the funding or attention they need to have a sequel if they aren't properly released in the USA. Heck, even most films that are never get a sequel anyway!**

**Mr. Horowitz's opinion on Alex Pettyfer as Alex Rider is that he was too good looking for the part, he said Alex was supposed to look pretty ordinary.**

**You know, I always quite liked the film. I think this is probably because I watched the film first, and then read the series. I actually didn't read Stormbreaker at all to begin with, since I hadn't realised how many differences there would be to the film. Then I read it and so wasn't so OK with the film anymore…still, I like the SAS training bit in it, yay for Feel Good Inc.! I love that song :3**

**But what the heck was with Bear instead of Snake?**

**And why did Yassen and Jack swap hair colours with each other?**

**And why did no one notice the high speed motor bike chase thing?**

**And why was Sabina riding a horse when it was a Friday, meaning she should be in school, and had told Alex she was riding at the weekend?**

**And why….urgh, you get the point…**

**One last thing, there's a competition I'm thinking of entering, though I have no chance of winning. The theme is 'Your favourite book'. The Alex Rider series is my favourite (Bet you would have never guessed I liked it!)**

**So I flicked through my graphic novels, going, " I could use that…or that…and that…and…" But then it occurred to me, maybe I should see if I was actually any good at drawing those pictures…the result was entertaining… I'm good at drawing, just not humans, I can never get the bits to fit in with each other. I went wrong straight away but had no rubber so had to continue as it was. But by the time it came to drawing the second eye, I couldn't be bothered anymore, so my picture degenerated into a fairly well drawn effeminate mutant with an eye patch, small dragon wings, multiple piercing and devil horns…oh dear.**


	7. Progress

**I'm typing this on my new laptop! Unfortunately I need an activation code or something for Microsoft Word, and I can't find one among any of the information that came with my laptop! Not sure how many more times I can open this program before it self-destructs or something...**

**Disclaimer: The characters featured in this Fanfic all belong to Anthony Horowitz. Darn it.**

**Recap: Jack catches sight of Alex covered in blood on a late night news report. Desperately she tries everything she can think of to find out what's happing to Alex, but MI6 won't tell her. Why? Could it be because they don't think she could ever believe the truth? That Alex has been bitten by a Vampire?**

_Progress_

Her hair was tangled and in need of a wash, so was the rest of her. She hadn't had a shower since she had spotted Alex on the news. Jack had had hardly any sleep either, leading to dark rings under her eyes. All in all she looked rather like a zombie, and felt like one too. Lack of sleep had taken its toll on her. Everything in her life had gone wrong it seemed, and she was stuck, not able to move forward in any way without confirmation on her charge, and unable to go back to who she had been before she had first become a lodger in Ian Rider's house, for just the same reason.

In her current state it was a miracle that she ever came across the E-mail at all, and in fact, it had been an accident. Jack had been hoping to get a reply to the message she had sent a cousin of hers in the American army, though she knew deep inside that he wouldn't be able to help her in anyway, even if he could make sense of the garbled and cryptic E-mail.

Scanning through the received, messages, deleting any she came across because she just couldn't stand normal life at the moment, Jack could see that he hadn't got back to her.

_Tigers are dying out! Sign thi... *Delete*_

_Hi! Its Stev, you know, from high school? I was wondering if... *Delete*_

_J Star, your next Rentals are on the way. Films: Twilight... *Delete* _

_Your vote makes a diff... *Delete*_

_I agree Marcus... *Delete* _

_I agree Mar... *Delete*_

_I agree... *Delete*_

It wasn't until she had deleted the same message a third time, only for it to pop up again, that Jack even noticed. A frown appeared on her already miserable looking face. Had she received some sort of Virus via Email, on top of everything else that had happened?

Violently she stabbed the 'delete' button again and again. But every time the message reappeared. Jack was so near the edge, and it seemed as though this would be the thing to push her over the edge. She could feel the sobs building up in her throat, constricting it and making it hard to breathe. Already tears had started to fall onto the black keyboard at her fingertips.

"_No! I must be strong for Alex! For Alex..."_

Thinking of him for the thousandth time that day did not help, and desperately Jack tried to think of something to do to hold back the raging tears that threatened to fall.

It was then that she actually decided to read the Email

_From: _

_I Agree Marcus, A long term illness is no Fun at all. Richard himself has been Ill for some time now as well and Everyone at work seems to be off with colds too! means more work for me, but Never mind, the more I Do, the more I get paid! talking about work, Oliver's still doing all he can to get me Fired, i swear it's his fault that Andrew's Left. Everybody knows what he's up to except Xavier, useless twat._

_oh well, i hope you get better soon_

_-s_

Jack stared at it in confusion. Why would such a boring, benign and obviously miss sent E-mail contain a virus that stopped it being deleted, and did who knows what else to the computer? It just didn't make any sense at all. Unless perhaps someone had somehow picked up a random E-mail someone had sent, attached the bug and then sent it to multiple others? Maybe all it was a message meant for someone else, this 'Marcus', obviously, and for some strange reason her computer wasn't letting her get rid of it?

Twice more she scanned through it, seven more times she tried to delete it.

But what if it was actually meant for her? It was an absurd idea, and Jack had no real reason to believe it, but stranger things had happened before, and she was so desperate for help that she could have turned basically anything around her at that moment into some sort of sign linked to Alex. But if it was a sign, what did it mean?

Deciding she needed to be able to study it better, she printed out the E-mail. As it came out of her printer, she was surprised to see two things on it that she had not spotted in the actual E-mail. The first was a small black and white crest at the top of the paper, a shield shape with a large 'S' in side of it. At the start and end of the letter there little cogs drawn, three fitted together at either end, getting slightly bigger as they got further away from the 'S'.

The second thing was at the bottom, an address, along with a date and time. Jack stared down at the piece of paper in her hands, still warm from the printer. This was proof, right? Proof that there was more to this E-mail then first met the eye. She felt like rushing off to this location straight away. Every part of her was screaming that if there was a way of finding out what had happened to Alex, she should rush off to find it as soon as possible. But there was a date and time set. Tomorrow, at half past twelve. Tomorrow seemed like an eternity away, but if it led to her finding Alex, or at least discovering what had happened to him, surely it would be worth the wait? And perhaps the E-mail had more to give away then just a location and time. Picking out a pen from a nearby draw, she poised it above the sheet of paper, held lightly in her finger tips like a guillotine held up by just a few threads of a tattered rope, waiting to fall. There was something more to this Email, something obvious. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Jack Starbright smiled. It was so obvious.

…_~*AR-OBTS*~…_

_Pain. Blood. Anger. Thirst. Fear. Bullets. Scorpia. Red tinted glasses. Blood. Cold blue eyes. Assassins. Death. Hatred. Blood. Agony. Crocodiles. Guns. Nuclear Bombs. Sharks. Knives. Blood. Hauntingly familiar faces. _

His drug induced sleep was filled with all of these horrors, and more. It is said that those about to die see their lives flash before their eyes. If so Alex had come close to dying many times before he finally awoke again.

Things were different this time, he sensed that straight away. Though his was tied down to a slanted hospital bed in a bland, medical room, the agony he had been in before had faded to a dull fully bodied ache. Now Alex felt a little as though he had been punched and kicked from head to toe a couple of weeks ago. That was the nearest comparison he could give to how he was feeling right now. So though he wasn't exactly feeling on top of the world right now, it was still a huge improvement on before. His mind was a little clearer now as well, though not by a huge amount. His recent memories still felt fuzzy and illusive. Every time he tried to concentrate on what happened, the images in his head faded further away. Not that he was sad to see them go; they were full of blood, pain and confusion.

Something else felt different about him as well, though he couldn't quite pin-point what the change was. What was it? Alex felt that if only he could escape these straps and stretch life back into his body, then he would know what the change was. But what were the chances of his captors letting him go? He tried to work out who it could be that he was a prisoner of. Scorpia? But hadn't he been told that MI6 had made some sort of deal with them to leave him alone? Not that Alex would ever trust them to keep their end of a bargain. But there were other criminal organisations, evil individuals, or perhaps even vengeful allies of those he had taken down in the past, which would have no qualms about kidnapping the teenage boy.

What really bothered Alex though, apart from the whole been strapped down and helpless things, was that no matter how much he racked his mind for the information, he could find no memory of being kidnapped. Perhaps he had been knocked out by some sort of drug before he had chance to realise the danger?

He tried to piece together the recent past one step at a time. So he had been on a mission for MI6, hadn't he? Living on the streets in London. Ah, good times, good times. Freezing his butt off, being approached by drug dealers... making a friend. For a second a pang of worry shot through him as he suddenly remembered Blue, and the fact that he had gone missing. But he pushed those thoughts away, there was nothing he could do to track down Blue at the moment, for goodness sake, he couldn't even move most of his own body right now! Best to worry about himself before getting himself wound up about someone else. Immediately though his thoughts turned to Jack. What would she be doing right now? Surely MI6 would have informed her by now that something bad had happened to her? How much would they tell her? Or perhaps they were going to try and get him back. But what if they weren't going to try and rescue him at all? What if they were going to just leave him here? Wherever 'here' was.

Suddenly he heard a noise. Alex had thought he was alone, but now that he thought about it, he realised that he could actually tell there was someone else here by scent alone. Now _that _was weird. Not wanting to give away that he had woken up, he peered out through his eyelashes. But he couldn't see anyone from that angle and so was forced to give up that pretence, opening his eyes properly and slowly turning his head. There! He suddenly caught sight of who had made a sound. It was the same guy as he had first glimpsed when he woke up last time Last time...what had happened last time? Something... something strange. Something bad.

Pushing those thoughts away, he studied the man in front of him. He was fast asleep, dozing quietly slumped a plastic backed hair in the corner of the room. He looked about thirty years old, with a shock of black hair, a couple of day's worth of stubble on his face and a long, crooked nose. He was wearing a lab coat, rumpled up by the way he was sitting down.

As Alex watched him, the slipped a little further down the hard-backed chair, the fabric of the clothes he was wearing brushing against the plastic chair. This was the faint sound that Alex had detected earlier. He frowned slightly. It was such a small noise, how could he have heard it so clearly? Especially when there was machinery bleeping and humming all around him. Taking his eyes off the sleeping figure, he looked round at all the strange machines around him, most of which were connected up to him and seemed to be measuring something or other. Alex really wished he could move. He felt as though he was going to get cramp any second and he really wanted to stretch out, wanted to let his limbs click and his muscles move. Especially his back. Alex was sure that if only he was able to arch his back and move his shoulder bones back, something in his back would click, but in a good way, and that he would feel much better for it.

He tried as best as he could to stretch and tense his muscles, but the ties restraining him were tight and unforgiving, allowing for very little movement. But as he moved a new beeping started up, an annoying, high pitched one. Realising he was the cause of it Alex immediately stopped moving, and the sound desisted.

But it had been enough to wake up the sleeping man, who jerked awake with a start.

…_~*AR-OBTS*~…_

The sudden movement was enough for gravity to take its toll, and before he knew what was happening, he slide straight off the chair and landed on his butt on the floor. A rough bark of laughter, followed by coughing made his head whip round. He stared, wide eyed at the young man strapped down to the hospital bed. Their eyes met for a second before the patient started to cough again, breaking the contact. A second was far too long to be looking into those unnerving orbs however, and he shuddered.

He then started to feel very guilty. He should have been awake when then subject became conscious, so he could send him straight back to sleep. They didn't think he would be ready for proper contact with human beings for quite a long time yet.

The harsh sounding laughter at his fall had been the first sound he had heard the teenager make, beyond screaming though, so perhaps he was getting better faster than they thought?

Despite that thought, he was still shocked when the subject suddenly talked.

"Where am I?"

For a second he considered not answering and simply injecting more drugs into the boy so he would fall asleep again. He had always much proffered sleeping subjects to waking ones. Though the dead ones where even easier to deal with.

"Umm..." He licked his lips nervously, and then decided he might as well be honest. "You're at Cold Hall."

…_~*AR-OBTS*~…_

Cold Hall? Or, to give it it's full name, Cold Hall Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Everyone who lived anywhere near London knew about this place, though few had been anywhere near it. It was the place where those criminals so evil and mental that even places like Rampton Hospital couldn't deal with them. Why the hell was he here? It was such a random place to lie about that he was convinced it must be true. But if he was in Cold Hall, MI6 must know about it! There was no way he could have ended up in such a closely guarded and well known place without them knowing. So that meant...

"Where does MI6 come into it?" Speaking was difficult; his voice came out all hoarse and chocked up. Alex wished he could have something to drink; his throat was really starting to burn.

His question seemed to startle the man slightly.

"MI6? They, uh, know your here if that's what you mean. Though I..." He broke off. Alex wondered if he had been about to say something along the lines of, 'though I don't know what the connection between you and MI6 is', the way he frowned and hesitated made Alex think that he wasn't aware that the worked for them.

So MI6 knew all about him being here? Which probably meant that they knew he was being restrained like this. Why? Why would they do this to him? It didn't make sense. He was relieved that at least he wasn't in the hands of one of his enemies, but despite the fact that MI6 had sent him off on one life threatening mission after another, they had never treated him like this. And why was he in a hospital for the criminally insane? Why hadn't they sent him to Saint Dominic's like they had done in the past? Everything was so bad and weird and confusing and wrong. Alex let out a groan as all the worry and pain built up inside him. There was one thing that was bothering him more than anything else now though.

"I'm thirsty..." He muttered, mostly to himself. At this the man in front of him transformed from having a slightly pained and worried look on his face, to full blown horror. This simply added to the long list of things that were confusing Alex. "What, is water a banned substance at Cold Hall?" He joked weakly.

"N-no, of cause not." Came the reply. Was it just his imagination, or did he sound oddly relieved? Man, he should have just stayed asleep; the nightmares probably would have been easier to deal with then this parody of waking life.

The man disappeared behind him, out of sight and a couple of seconds later Alex heard the sound of a tap being turned and water gushing out. Then he reappeared, holding a see-through plastic cup filled with water. He hesitated then, noticing a problem that had already occurred to him.

"You couldn't possibly untie me could you?" Again a look of horror crossed the man's face, sending a jagged blade of fear into Alex's chest. Why was he acting like this? What was so scary about him, and why was it necessary for him to be tied down so ruthlessly?

He wasn't surprised though when the only answer he received was a mute shaking of the head.

Instead of letting him go, the man nervously lent forward at put the cup to Alex's lips. Though his hands shook slightly, he still managed to let Alex take several sips at a time without spilling it all over him.

Though both of them tried to ignore it, they could tell by the slight heat in their own cheeks and a slight, visible reddening on the face of the other, that both were uncomfortable and little embarrassed by the situation. Somehow it made both of them feel as though the other person was just a little more human then they first thought.

"Do you want some more water?" The man in the lab coat asked Alex. "No, I'm okay." It was a lie. There was nothing OK about this situation at all, including his throat. It still felt weird, but if a glass of water hadn't got rid of the problem, (though it did feel a little better now, and he was able to speak properly again), then he figured that he must have a really sore, or perhaps swollen throat, and that more water wasn't going to fix that. The guy still hovered near him nervously, despite the fact that he was the one in complete control here, Alex being strapped down tightly to a hospital bed and all. Alex turned his head to face him, and saw him flinch. Looking up at him standing at the head, and just behind his bed, Alex said in a good humoured but slightly annoyed voice, "I don't bite you know!" Alex saw him visible flinch, and the faint smile on his own face slipped away as a memory he had tried so hard to grasp earlier came floating back of its own accord.

…_~*AR-OBTS*~…_

It was clear in that moment that he knew the boy remembered. There was shock and horror in his inhuman, dazzling black eyes, with their strange brownish-red flecks of colour. "Bite..." He barely heard the whispered word, but worried as he did so that the subject was going to go crazy on them again, like he had last time. He had actually been amazed that that it, no, he, hadn't already tried to attack him, and so wouldn't be surprised if that happened now. But it didn't. Instead the patient hung his head down, as though he had just realised the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Then, slowly he looked up at him again, the pain and surprise still visible on his features. "That...That's...I was bitten, wasn't I?" There was a pleading tone to his voice, as though he was desperately awaiting for someone to burst through the door, shouting, "Surprise! Got you real good there! You should have seen your face!" But there was no denying the truth, however frightening and incredible it was. "Yes. You were bitten." It surprised him how heavy and sad his own voice came out. It was then that he realised the pitied this pitiful, unnatural wretch, this inhuman creature, this poor, poor boy.

**I know, I know, another short chapter. But I think that's how It's going to be, relatively short chapters posted up as often as I can manage. But hey, I typed the whole thing on my laptop in a couple of days! Unfortunately the space bar makes a really annoying squeaky noise every time it's pressed in the middle, which is really getting on my nervous... but oh well, please review! Reviews make the world go round, honest! If you don't review we will all die! (There's incentive for you!)**

**By the way, can you see what's hidden in the E-mail. I thought it was pretty obvious but my Mum couldn't see it! XD**


	8. Escaping Limbo

**Sorry it's taken so long! I've been weighed down by a lot of homework, (and a very, very heavy school bag, but that's a different kind of weighed down) and so have had little chance to write this recently.**

**Disclaimer: Anthony Horowitz owns the rights to the Alex Rider series, not me. Lucky guy. Even if I could go back in time before he wrote it and have the chance to write it myself, I wouldn't. I just couldn't do as nearly a good job as he has. So the rights belong to Mr. Horowitz in the past and the present. As for the future; who knows? **

**Recap: Desperate for information on what has happened to Alex, Jack comes across a strange E-mail from an unknown ally.**

**And Alex, after discovering that he has not in fact been kidnapped, but is being kept at Cold Hall, a hospital for the criminally insane at MI6's orders, starts to remember his recent, painful past. How will he cope now he has gained an inkling of what he might have become?**

_Escaping Limbo_

"But..." Alex shook his head violently from side to side, as though by denying the truth he could make it a lie. "But, no, no! That can't have happened, I mean they don't exist. That's impossible. That's just...impossible." He spluttered in desperation. But he knew his heart was pounding and that he was starting to hyperventilate.

"I know it seems impossible." The lab assistant agreed solemnly, "It should be, but it's not. As crazy as it sounds, you were bitten." There was a moment of silence and Alex could see the man's lips moving, as though he was trying to force a word out through them. "By a vampire." He sounded as though he barely believed his own words.

As the pain-filled memories he had tried to recall came swooping to the surface, the raw panic at finding himself tied down like this that he had worked equally hard to quell bubbled up as well. It brought back so many terrible memories. He could almost see the giant grinding stones, almost feel himself slipping further and further towards them on a conveyor belt, almost hear Conrad's distorted voice hissing in his ear.

It was all just too much for him, brave as he was he had finally reached the edge and panicked as he went tumbling over.

"No!" The shout tore from his ragged throat. "No, no, no, that can't happen. It just can't. They, they, they don't exist. It's a lie! They aren't real, there's no such thing as...vampires!" He stopped to gasp in a breath of the room's sterilised air, eyes wide with panic, his denials made louder and more fervent by fear.

Then the memories skipped on to a much more recent one. Unnatural, blood red eyes staring down at him, his back pressed against a rough brick wall, a strong body holding him still.

Those eyes glowed in front of him, the real world long forgotten as he was taken back in time.

"Please, no..." Alex moaned in horror. "Let me go, let me go, please let me go!" He thrashed around madly, barely conscious of the world around him. All there was was a mindless fear and the desperate need to escape. He didn't notice the sudden influx of medication as a sedative was pumped into his blood stream. And then the world started to dim. Everything faded away and his cries stopped. The last thing he did without thinking about it before succumbing to the drugs, was to give the lab assistant a look that was a mixture of confusion, hurt and disappointment.

Then the nightmares reclaimed him.

…_~*AR-OBTS*~…_

Jack consulted the copy of the Email clutched in her hand for seemingly the thousandth time that day. It was crumpled and drawn on. Part of the Email address, '_MergingInformation6' _had an arrow leading off it to the word, 'MI6?'

All the capital letters in the actual Email had been ringed, and then the message those letters spelt out scrawled at the bottom of the paper.

'_I am a friend of Alex'_

Those six words filled her with more hope than she had felt since first spotting Alex on the news. She had wanted to rush straight to the location given, but had refrained. The date had been just the next day, but the hours before the appointed time had dragged past painfully slow. She had got very little sleep that night and to fill in the slow passing seconds, she had scrubbed and rubbed and washed until she was sure that she looked less like a zombie and more like a human again. She had even applied make-up, more than she ever usually would to try and cover up the dark rings under her eyes which indicated to the world more than one sleepless night.

Jack had also been very careful when choosing her outfit. Not to try and make herself look as good as possible, but so that she would be as best prepared as she could be for…well, for anything. For all she knew this could be all some sort of terrible trap, her paranoia was so much at this time that she was able to believe pretty much anything and everyone around her could be a threat.

She had picked out solid, comfy boots with a small heel on purpose. The less heel, the better for running, but in a fight that small heel would be much more painful when kicked into a tender place then, say, a flip-flop. Her trousers, (or pants as she always thought of them, refusing to let go of the words she was so used to in exchange for England's, despite having lived here all these years), were fairly smart looking, but allowed for plenty of movement. She was also wearing a large, though not particularly thick coat (it was spring after all) with large pockets. Large enough to hide a small knife.

After glancing at the page in her hand, confirming that she had got the right building, she strode across the road, trying to look as confident as she could. She wasn't entirely sure what type of building she had expected it to be, but it certainly hadn't been anything like the busy American Diner style restaurant that she was now approaching.

Was this some sort of joke? Or trick? Or trap? How was she supposed to work out who she had come here to meet? If in fact, that was what the Email entailed…

Upon entering a waitress approached her, but she left her alone once Jack informed her that she was simply looking for a friend. Well, one of Alex's friends. Apparently. Who could it be? Jack couldn't see anyone she recognized here, or anyone else who might be the right person to approach.

It was just as she was about to give up that she gave the restaurant one last sweeping glance and suddenly did a double take.

Jack looked down at the Email in her hand, then back up again. Yes, there was no doubt about it; the back of that laptop over there had exactly the same crest on it as the Email did!

Heart starting to pound, she slowly approached the back of the restaurant. When she was just a few nervous steps away, a very fat man wearing a suit looked up from his large laptop and smiled at her.

"Ah, Jack. I took the privilege of ordering a salami pizza for you, I hope you don't mind?"

"That's fi.." Jack started to say, before stopping herself. Pizza! Who cared about pizza? That wasn't what she was her to talk about.

Surreptitiously checking behind her for any visible signs of danger, Jack pulled up a chair and asked in a low voice, "Who are you? How do you know him? Where is he? How is he?" There was desperation in her voice and in her wide, wild looking eyes. The large man was unperturbed though, and after calmly closing his laptop, replied. "My name is Smithers." Recognition dawned on Jack. She had heard Alex mention that name before. She dug up as much as she could remember about him. It wasn't much because she and Alex avoided mentioning anything to do with his missions if they could. Wasn't Smithers the one person at MI6 that her charge had said he could stand? Wasn't he the man that gave him whose clever gadgets that had helped save his life over and over again?

Jack relaxed a little in here seat. But not much, it could still be a trap.

Though he had appeared to be fiddling with his laptop, Smithers had been watching the harassed looking young woman in front of him and had noted the subtle changes in her demeanour.

"Am I right in thinking that you know then how I and young Alex became acquainted?" Jack nodded mutely. She knew only very little about the man in front of her, but Jack thought it was best that he thought she knew more then she really did.

"Well then, I guess it's on to the more important matters, Miss. Starbright."

Jack didn't question the fact that he already knew her name, but leaned forward slightly as she waited for him to answer, not realising that as was now holding her breath.

"It's a very bad business though, very bad indeed…"

He then caught sight of the look on Jack's face and hastily made amends.

"He's not dead! Lord no, and he's not likely to be anytime soon."

Well, at least that was something. He was still alive. But she had so many questions to ask. Jack opened her mouth, words forming, but before she could utter any, Smithers raised a pudgy hand to silence her.

"I believe you asked for the boy's location?" Once again Jack nodded her consent.

"For reasons that will soon become appear, but not for the ones that you will immediately presume, Alex is being kept in Cold Hall Hospital for the Criminally Insane."

"Criminally insane!" Jack squawked in outrage, "But Alex isn't a criminal! He's not insane!" Several people glanced round at her by her last words, which had risen in pitch without her even realising.

Smithers made large, quieting motions with his hand.

Jack wondered why he had even arranged to meet her in such a public place. But that brief thought was quickly pushed aside as people returned to their food and Smithers continued.

"I know, I know. Alex is no criminal, nor is he insane. I mentioned before that he is not there for reasons you would first expect."

Here he sighed and closed his eyes for a second, as though praying to the lord for the strength to say what must be said.

"Alex's case is an unusual one. Very unusual. And you have every right to disbelieve what I am about to tell you. But you must understand that the boy is too dear to me, and the situation too serious for me to drag you out here for a joke. I don't know as much about what's going on as I would like, and I'm not really supposed to know any of it at all."

Mr. Smithers paused to pull out a clean, ornate handkerchief from some pocket or other. As he used it to wipe his brow Jack glimpsed the same emblem that had been on both the email and his laptop embroided on one edge in silver.

Inside Jack was screaming, '_get on with it, get on with it!' _But she refused to let the bubbling anxiety threatening to consume her whole being show. Below the table though her hands were clenched into tight fists, her nails leaving red half moon crescents on her palms.

"You see the bosses at MI6 never tell anyone everything that's going on. They have to stay one step ahead of everyone else, even their own agents in an attempt to stay in charge. Of course it's not always just that. Sometimes they consider hiding things from people being for their own good. It appears that this happens with Alex a lot. There are also some things that they know, that they themselves would much rather be ignorant, or at least, I mean, there are things they wish were not true…" He trailed off, realising that his words had startled to ramble off quite a lot.

In front of him Jack squirmed, desperate for Smithers to just cut to the chase and tell her what the hell had happened to the most important person in her whole life.

He cleared his throat noisily before speaking once again.

"For a long, long time now, many countries have been researching the paranormal and the supernatural. Most studies have proved these things to be utter rubbish to be honest, but there are a few government scientists who have been convinced for some time now that there is one myth that is not in fact a myth. As far as I've been able to find out, they cover their tracks amazingly well most of the time, but there have been slight slip ups noticed by governments all over the world. Alone they could mean anything. Together they make for a seemingly unhappy coincidence. Or, if you are so inclined to believe, something much more sinister then that. Vampires."

Jack had been hanging on to his every word, a frown creasing her forehead as she tried to work out how on earth all this rubbish was connected to Alex. But when that one word alone was spoken at barely more than a whisper, all her anger and frustration erupted inside her.

Without making the conscious decision to do so, she found herself leaping to her feet, her chair collapsing backwards onto the floor with a clang, and her fist smacking down onto the table with an audible thud. Someone behind her let out a shriek of surprise but she didn't bother look round.

"That's, that's just…" She started heatedly, searching for the right word, before screeching: "Crap! Utter crap! How can you sit there and talk to me about…" Suddenly Jack felt a light touch on her shoulder, and recoiling, thinking she was in danger, she stopped in mid sentence.

But it wasn't two heavily built men in dark suits and sunglasses, come to arrest her. It was just a young, spotty and rather annoyed member of the restaurants staff. "Miss, if you continue to upset our customers I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Jack was frozen somewhere between rage and disdain at what she was hearing, making her want to turn round and stride away, and the desperate hunger for news about Alex, which begged her to stay, no matter fruitless this meeting seemed to have been so far. For a second there was a desperate struggle inside her and the next she was carefully picking up her chair with a resigned sigh.

"No worries, I'm fine now." She muttered to the angry-looking waiter as she sat back down, the hand with which she had hit the table a few seconds ago beginning to throb.

Jack gave Smithers a defiant look, she wasn't about to apologies for her outburst, but she would allow him to try and explain himself.

It occurred to her then that that was the second time during this conversation that he had correctly predicted her reaction in advance and warned her against it, only for her to act like that anyway.

But still, vampires! How the hell did he expect her to believe that not only did they exist, but that they were someway linked to Alex's absence? Had he seen a vampire and decided that the only rational experience after such a sight was to go nuts and rob a bank, thus leading to him being incarcerated in Cold Hall? No, that was just plain stupid…

"I would not believe it either if I were you." Smithers said gently. "In fact to begin with I hardly believed it myself. I thought it must be some sort of joke, till I dug a little deeper and found out all the computer files related to the one I had come across accidentally were heavily encrypted. And when I say 'heavily encrypted', I really mean it. It took me quite a while to get into those files, I can tell you. I hadn't had a challenge like that in some time!" There was a happy, wistful look on his face as he reminisced.

"But what did you find?" Growled Jack.

"Strange things, very strange things."

"Like?" She prompted.

"Lots of garbled accounts of vampire sightings, several interviews with people claiming to have been bitten by them, newspaper articles on them from almost 50 years ago and reports on bodies that had all been strangely marked. Most of it was complete drivel to be honest, nothing I would give credit to, and very little proof. But there were some things that seemed as though they could be true, and notes along with them from very highly credited members of governments situated all over the world that claimed they were true. As I say, I found it very hard to believe. But all the bits add up to make quite a convincing picture, even if they don't really give much away about vampires."

"But what's all this got to do with Alex?" Jack interjected.

Smithers gave a heavy sigh. (Though most things to do with the rather overweight man could probably be described as 'heavy')

"Well, you do know that he was stationed here in London to look into the suspicious deaths of many homeless people in the city?"

She didn't answer, instead, her thought process leaping ahead; Jack asked "You think that _vampires _were doing that?" There was scorn in her voice at the name of the creatures she refused to believe existed outside of books and films like Twilight.

Patiently, Smithers replied, "Yes I do. I suspected from the start, but back then I still wasn't entirely sure that I believed they really existed. I am no longer in any doubt."

He seemed so sure…but it was impossible, there were no such thing is vampires!

"If I had known what Alex was going to find himself up against…well, I would have done all I could to stop them sending him on such a mission, though I have very little power when it comes to that sort of thing. Or anything at all for that matter. I suppose I could have threatened to send out a virus that would practically destroy their entire database. Yes, I'm sure I could have done that quite easily."

He suddenly caught sight of the dangerous look in Jack's eyes and decided it was wise to return to the matter at hand.

"But, well, I didn't know, so there was nothing I could really do, I'm afraid." He said lamely.

Smithers flipped the lid of his laptop back up before continuing.

"Even now it appears nobody knows much about what actually happened to him. All that I've managed to discover is that late Friday night or perhaps early Thursday, he was attacked. First by a group of drunken youths, and then, shortly after it appears, by a vampire. Alex managed to get away, which is more than can be said for a couple of the young yobs who first troubled him. I've found footage of him then running through the streets of London, clearly in a large amount of distress I'm afraid."

"I know! I saw him!" Jack interrupted, her voice cracking slightly as she spoke the words.

"Is this what you saw?" He asked, motioning for her to come and look at the screen of his laptop.

And there it was again, those few painful seconds in which a bloody and wide eyed Alex Rider was caught on camera. She nodded mutely and watched as terribly grainy images of Alex followed, obviously taken by security cameras, captured glimpses of the teenage boy as he fled. And then as the last scene played out, of a car screeching to a holt and someone bundling Alex into it, Smithers paused.

"Look, there!" He pointed with one fat finger to part of the screen. Jack squinted at it but all she saw was darkness. The quality of this filming was just terrible! And besides, it had been night at the time, meaning many areas of London were cast in gloom despite all the street lamps. "I don't see anything."

He moved the bar on screen a little further back then pressed play again. "Watch closely." So Jack did, and then she saw it. A blurry figure appeared on screen and watched the car go, then seemed to turn away. And as it did so, Jack was sure that she saw a flash of red.

"I'm positive that that was the vampire."

"Is that all the proof you've got to go on? A dark shape among other dark shapes on a few seconds of CCTV footage?"

"Oh no, it gets much worse than that, I can assure you. I have a friend who works for the government in a scientific and medical role. When I first confronted him about what I had found out about vampires, he denied everything. But he's a terrible liar, is Harry Pain. He was there when they transferred Alex from hospital to Cold Hall, and he contacted me, telling me that he was there. Harry's a decent chap you see, knew from me mentioning him that I know the boy, though he doesn't know how, and accidentally let slip something of his condition that made me realise straight away that there was a strong possibility of a vampire connection. And after testing my skills of persuasion, he managed to get hold of for me the location of some very closely guarded pictures; he owed me a very large favour you see. No one else could have got to them but me, you know. And I could only do it because I designed the blasted system!

And what I found...well, it's some very sensitive information, which to me leaves no room for doubt."

He then proceeded to show her dozens of images taken of Alex, all the time rambling on about how difficult it had been to get them. Jack barely heard a word of what he said as all of her concentration was on the images appearing on screen. Nearly all of them where of him unconscious, and the first ones showed him how he must have appeared to begin with when he was first covered in blood. The wide shots made him look so vulnerable and hurt that Jack just wanted to reach out to hold his hand. Then came some close up shots of his wounds, mostly ones of his neck. It was clear that most of the blood had come from there, though the puncture marks where not evident until Mr. Smithers clicked forward to one in which the blood had been cleared away. There were several small gashes there. Jack stared at them in horror. They were not the two neat marks she had glimpsed in so many vampire films over the years. She could quite clearly see the marks left by a mouthful of teeth, far too vicious to have come from any human but the wrong shape to have been caused by any animal she could think of. That left just one explanation. One insane, impossible explanation. But there were no such thing as vampires! They didn't exist. If they did, surely the whole world would know about it! Though Smithers had said something about them covering their tracks well... No. That was just an excuse, it must be.

More images appeared, several showing the gradual healing of the cuts on his neck until all was left was a bit of bruising, and then nothing. More proof. More impossibility. There hadn't been nearly enough time for his neck to heal up completely, without even a single scar to show for his troubles. But perhaps they had doctored the images? Made it look as though he had been attacked? But deep down, Jack knew they weren't faked. What would it achieve? MI6 had no reason to try and trick her into thinking Alex had been bitten by a vampire. If they wanted to get rid of her, lying to her that he was dead, or simply deporting her from the country on the next plane to America, would have made for more sense than this. So it must be real. But it couldn't be.

Then came the pictures that caused a lump in Jack's throat. They looked so real, so horrible, so painful and twisted that even Smithers stopped talking and just watched them grimly, even though he had already seen them all before.

They were of Alex, clearly awake and strapped down brutally with thick plastic straps to a hospital bed. His eyes were wide open, but they were not the serious brown eyes that she knew so well. Instead they were so dark that it would have been impossible to tell where his pupils actually where, if it was not for the red flecks that surrounded them like a still image of a swirling vortex. They couldn't possibly be real...Could they?

But if the colour of his eyes had been manipulated via computer, what could be the explanation for everything else? Like the look of utter agony etched into his features on one photo? Or the way he had his head thrown back in another, the picture immortalizing a scream that she would never hear and yet could hear reverberating around her skull? And Jack couldn't imagine Alex ever snarling in such a freakish, inhuman way as he was doing a couple of slides later. Jack thought her heart was going to burst through her ribs as the images got worse and worse, showing the boy she loved so much looking more and more feral and vicious each time.

And then there were the fangs, pale blurs in many shots, and clearly glinting daggers in others. They looked so out of place, so wrong, and yet they seemed so real, not fake at all. Oh how she wished they looked fake...

By the time the slideshow had looped back round to the first picture Jack had both her hands over her face, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. No one else in the American style diner noticed though, she and Smithers were at a table tucked away at the back. And if anyone had seen her, they wouldn't have been able to see what had upset the pretty, red-haired women, as the laptop scream was only visible from where she was standing.

Not for the first time that night, Smithers let out a deep sigh as Jack dabbed away her tears (and quite a lot of make-up). "I ran vigorous tests on them, hoping that it was just someone with a sick sense of humour and a lot of talent when it came to Photoshop who had manipulated the images like this. But since when do many people get what they hope for? I'm as sure as it is possible to be with this sort of thing that these images have not in any way been tampered with. There is a short video that I found along with these, would you like to see it?"

'Like'? Like had nothing to do with it. She didn't want to see the clip, didn't want to see him in yet more pain. But she must do. One last piece of evidence.

Grimly he passed her a set of head phones from somewhere of other. They too had the now familiar crest on with and S inside. Jack slipped them over her head as Smithers plugged them in and brought up the footage. If Alex had been shown it, he would have been unable to recall a second of it. It had been one of the times in which the vampire inside him had erupted, snarling and writhing within the confines of the tough plastic straps, the boy that was Alex pushed too far within his own mind to be conscious of his own actions.

It was horrible to watch, seeing him act like this. This wasn't Alex at all. But at the same time there was no room for doubt in Jack's mind that this was in fact Alex Rider.

When the clip ended, Jack tore off the headphones and slumped back down in to her seat, feeling as though all her energy had been sucked out of her. She felt numb and lost and confused and upset and angry and as though she was going to start crying again in a second. Her head was still trying to convince her that the idea of Vampires existing was far too ridicules to even consider, while her heart beat out the message, "_It's true, it's true, it's true." _And as hard as it would have been for her to believe twenty minutes ago, she found herself trusting her heart.

"But what do I do?" Jack gasped, tears threatening to spill once more.

Smithers placed one of his large hands on top of her slender ones, the closest thing to comfort he could give her. "There's not much you can do. He might even return to how he used to be, before he was bitten.

I'm afraid. You're not even supposed to know. But I had to tell you, it was too cruel to leave you in Limbo, without even proof he was alive. Now you must go home and pretend this meeting never happened. And you must stay strong for Alex. From what Harry told me, his condition will...quieten."

"You mean there's a cure?" Jack exclaimed.

Smithers shook his head. "I don't think there's anyway to change him back to human. I mean, I'm no expert on vampires, there might be... But from what he was saying, they believe there might be a way of calming him down. In fact, by the sounds of it, if all goes well there should be no reason why you can't see him again. I suspect though that MI6 will want to use him more than ever if he manages to get to a stage where he can integrate safely with people again."

"No!" How can they? The bastards! It's their fault that he's like this! They did this to him...how can they..."

"I know, I know, Mr. Blunt can be a despicable man at times. Nothing matters to him apart from his country. He would feed a thousand people to the vampires if it stopped them taking over England."

Jack mumbled something about being able to understand that before Smithers returned to a slightly earlier strain of the conversation.

"I'm positive that someone else from MI6 will contact you. They can't just leave you in limbo like this." Jack noticed that that was the second time he had said 'Limbo', the place between heaven and hell where those who were unable to move on to either were trapped for eternity with no chance of escape. Well Jack wasn't about to let herself get trapped like that forever.

"It's too dangerous to them. I'm not sure what they will tell you, or how long it will be before your able to see Alex. It could be months, maybe even years..."

She would never be able to survive years without him.

"But at least you now know." Smithers ended. Sensing that he had said everything he had come to say, Jack stood up and thanked him for telling her Alex was still alive, though the pain she now felt when she thought of him now was only marginally better than the uncertainty and fear before.

Just as she was about to leave, their food arrived with a surly apology about its lateness from a staff member. Jack stared down at it, feeling sick at the sight of food. "I'm sorry. I've got to go." There was no way she could eat it, even if turning the food down did seem a little rude. As she hurried off she heard Smithers call behind her, "No worries! I will eat it." Which at least reassured her that it would not go to waste.

Now to go home and wait. For as long as it took.

"_When you cried, I'd wipe away all your tears_

_When you screamed I'd fight away all your fears_

_And I held your hand through all of these years." *_

_*_**My Immortal by Evanescence was playing on my computer when I was near finishing this chapter, and these lines sort of stuck. Some of the other songs I've got on here seem to fit in well with this story as well, so I think I will start including song lyrics here and there when I found them to be appropriate :3**

**Once again, so sorry for the wait, but at least it was a fairly long chapter this time (at least for me it was). And I know this part of the plot is dragging on a bit, which is why I'm going to be hurrying things up a bit. By the end of the next chapter it should be starting to move on to the next phase. **

**Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, favourite and put this on subscription alert so far. Special thanks goes to With the What Now for giving up her time to beta check this.**

**And remember LittleShush, hush, hush! *Insert evil grin here***


	9. Medicine or Death?

**Once again I apologies for how long it's taken me to post a new chapter up, and it's a short one as well I'm afraid.**

**Disclaimer: If I was AH, this would be a book, not a fanfic and you would all be very disappointed...and slightly confused...**

**Recap: Jack now knows what has happened to Alex and so it's time for him to learn a little more about what actually happened to him, and what it means for the future**

_**Medicine or Death?**_

"How do you feel, Alex?"

"Fine, completely fine!" Care free joy was in his voice for the first time in who knew how long. It had been just under two weeks since Alex had been bitten, and so much had changed since then. It was incredible, just incredible.

It was the assistant who asked him, a man whose name Alex now knew and who he gleefully called 'Mr. Pain' despite his weak pleas to be referred to by his first name, Harry.

The other man who Alex regularly came into contact with, and who was Mr. Pain's immediate superior was an unpleasant creature by the name of Victor Stone. He disliked Alex, never referring to him by his real name, just the 'subject or the 'patient', or if he was in a particularly bad mood, 'it.' So in turn the teenage spy called him 'Vic' or 'Vicky.' It was safe to say that the two of them would never fully see eye to eye.

On the subject of eyes... Harry Pain shone a light into each of Alex's eyes. "Yep. I think that's about as good as we are going to get them."

"What do you mean?"

"Here, check for yourself." He passed Alex a small mirror from the desk next to him, one littered with a mixture of scientific equipment and rubbish. Several days ago Alex had finally been allowed off of the hospital bed. True, he could not leave this room, but it was a heck of a lot better than being tied down all the time. He felt as though it was going to take him a bit longer yet to get over the ordeal however, his back kept aching all the time and wherever there had been straps holding him down, there were still faint red marks on him. Normally such injuries to a vampire would have faded away much sooner than this, but that was just it.

The face that peered back out at him from the mirror was at once so familiar, but at the same time, strange to him. This was the first time he had seen his face since he had been bitten. Not being particularly self conscious with his looks, he simply hadn't bothered until now, and anyway, he hadn't wanted to see the strange coloured eyes they had told him he now possessed, too frightened that they would remind him of that monster's.

"Wow, I look like a need some serious sleep." Alex joked weakly, avoiding the important matter at hand. It was true though; there were unhealthy looking grey patches under his eyes. Eyes which just weren't quite right.

"They were black with red bits in before, so really, this is a vast improvement." Harry Pain chipped in helpfully.

Alex lowered the mirror briefly, not wanting to look at his eyes, and then sighing, glanced again. "But they're not the same as they were before, not quite..."

"I'm afraid that's pretty much going to be the summary of the rest of your life." Replied Harry.

Alex sighed again, knowing that there was no escaping what had happened. Before all this his eyes had always been dark brown, with a cobweb-like pattern of lighter brown trapped inside, the sort of thing most people have, if they look closely enough. Now they seemed darker than ever, though certainly not black like Mr. Pain had said they were to begin with. What had really changed though was the flecks and whirls in his eyes. They might not have changed shape, but whereas before they had been a slightly lighter shade of brown; they were now more chestnut coloured, as though they had become trapped between red and brown. Even when he stretched out his arm to move the mirror away from himself, this strange colour was still in clear contrast with the darker colours in his eyes.

Trying once more to reassure the boy, Harry Pain said, "They might look different than before, but your eyes don't really look all that different from a humans, no one meeting you for the first time will consider them particularly odd."

_'but your eyes don't really look all that different from a humans...' _He flinched at that, still unable to comprehend that he was no longer human... And he didn't give a toss about what strangers thought about his eyes, what about his friends? Sabina, Jack, Tom and a handful of others? How could he ever explain this to them? _"Oh hi Tom, how you doin'? My eyes? Ah, well, you know what it's like, being a teenage spy was bound to lead to me bitten by a vampire one day, but hey, what can you do?" _ Somehow, Alex felt that wouldn't really work.

"If you continue to take the medicine and tablets at regular intervals, it might get them back to normal..."

The medicine and tablets. These were why he was no longer tied down, why he was able to talk to a human being without ripping their throat out, why his eyes were no longer quite so freakish and strange. They had made such a difference to him. All the difference in the world.

After about his third day in captivity, he had first been injected with the medicine. It had been the only way they could have administered it, Alex still being so far gone. But the improvements had been dramatic. When 'Vicky' had later explained its properties, their mutual dislike of each other had led to him being very brief and Alex not paying as much attention as he should perhaps have done, but from what Alex had gathered, the medicine, which was called Parabiteamol (A pun which had not amused Alex in the slightest), contained a potent ingredient which suppressed the 'vampire virus'. Like HIV and some other illnesses, vampirism had no cure, but there was medicine which could help to some extent. Unlike if he had HIV though, Alex would not die from vampirism, in fact, it sounded as though the blood samples they had taken from him had shown that he should be much better at regenerating cells then a human would be, and so should heal much quicker and live for longer.

However, Parabiteamol, as well as suppressing bloodlust and such, also effected every benefit of being a vampire, which from tests on him in the early days they had discovered to be increased strength, heightened senses, better stamina, reduced vulnerability to pretty much everything from illness to injury, and as already mentioned, longer life and faster healing rate, which was why Alex was still in some level of pain.

"If I stopped taking the medicine, what would happen?"

Harry frowned, "I don't think the effects would be instantaneous... more like you would find yourself slowly reverting. Depending on how strong the last dosage was and how long you had taken the tablets, it could perhaps be up to 24 hours before you fully revert..."

Alex solemnly nodded his understanding. This medicine was all that stood between Alex's life and death, for as 'Vicky' had told him after yet another experimental batch that had had unpleasant side effects on him (extreme vomiting mostly), "If you don't start reacting properly to this stuff, we've been informed that we will have to put you down. The government can't risk a monster like you running round killing people, now can they?" It was this sort of thing that made Alex love this guy so much.

But luckily they had found a variety which appeared to have no negative effects on him, as far as they knew.

There was still something Alex felt suspicious about. If he was the first vampire they had 'captured' and so the first solid piece of evidence for their existence, how had they managed to manufacture this drug so quickly? Hadn't his chemistry text books from school mentioned somewhere that it could take around **twelve years** for a new medicine to finally be ready to be used on the general population? Though Alex wasn't exactly part of the 'general population' now, was he? And it did seem as though he had, to some extent, been used as a guinea pig for this drug. Harry had vaguely mentioned something about it being made in theory first, but still, nothing seemed to quite add up.

He felt as though he could trust Harry Pain though. He was the sort of person who everyone should have as uncle, but hopefully not as a father, he was timid, too clever for his own good, never stood up for himself and probably didn't have the first idea of how to act around children. He was a fast learner though, with a heart of gold and due to a secretive, well paid job, plenty of money to spend on birthday and Christmas presents for nieces and nephews, as long as their mothers gave him some advice on what to get them.

If he had worked for some bad guy or other, instead of the (debatable) good British government, he would most likely have been the brains behind some terrible weapon or other that he believed he was creating just for experimental purposes, before finding out its true purpose, nervously standing up to the madman in charge and getting shot dead for his troubles. So over all Alex got on with him fairly well, when Harry wasn't flinching away from him that is.

The man in question cleared his throat in a nervy sort of way. Alex levelled him with an expectant and slightly unsettling gaze.

"I don't know if I've already mentioned to you..." One glance at the teenager was enough to hurry him on, "But, ah, your people..." "They're not my people!"

"Oh, okay, _some people_ have said that once the Parabitamol was sorted out, that your re-integration with public would start."

Alex's eyes opened wide in surprise. "What? Really? Are you sure? Already?" He couldn't believe it! He had thought that MI6 would most likely want to keep him locked up out of sight for the rest of his life. Then he realised. Having a teenage spy at your disposal was one thing, but a teenage vampire spy was something else completely. And how could he escape their clutches when all that was keeping the bloodlust and murderer at bay was medicine that he wouldn't be able to get from anywhere but here?

How he hated them, now more than ever before. They had sent him up against an opponent they must have suspected he would face, without even a warning and now that this had happened, their grip of him had got stronger the ever.

"Apparently your, I mean, _the people _want you out of here and starting your rehabilitation as soon as possible."

Anger bubbling up inside him, Alex muttered, "And your sure no one from MI6 has come to see me?"

"Positive. No one else is _allowed _to see you, just me and Victor Stone."

"But on whose orders?"

"Ah..."

It didn't surprise Alex really; they would know how angry and dangerous he was now and so avoid contact with him for as long as possible. It wasn't going to work, the longer they stayed away the more bitter he became. And he wasn't about to swallow the story about both Mr. Blunt and Mrs. Jones both being off in China and being unable to leave yet. How cosy.

Even if that story was true, what about Mr. Crawley, or any of their other agents? And Smithers. He hadn't even sent a card.

"Well... Any idea what is meant by 'rehabilitation'?"

Harry Pain frowned hard, as though trying to remember some forgotten scrap of information. "Something about the SAS, a think."

"What?" Alex gasped. "Brecon Beacons? Again?"

Once again Mr. Pain thought hard about it, and then Alex could see from the expression on his pale, bespectacled face that he had just remembered something and was feeling quite pleased with himself.

"Oh, ah, I don't think so... I wasn't told much about it, not my department really you see. Something about a security scare there. It's in Wales, right?" Alex nodded

"Well I know you're being sent to somewhere in the Lake District."

That triggered a memory. Hadn't that journalist who had threatened to expose his spying thought he had been trained in the Lake District?

"But why?"

Harry shrugged apologetically, "As I said, I don't get told much of this stuff, its none of my business, but apparently MI6 want to see how much being bitten has changed you, and how well the medicine works."

"By chucking me in with a pack of SAS soldiers?" Alex asked, making it sound as though he was being thrown to the wolves.

Harry scratched the beck of his neck nervously as he replied "Ur, yeah, pretty much. I doubt they will know...ah, what you are, so I think you're going to have to keep that a secret.

That made Alex laugh briefly, "As though anyone would ever believe me!"

"Ah, you may have a point there I'm afraid."

"I'm guessing that I'm going to have to take a lot of medicine with me?"

"Oh yes, lots and lots, we don't want you...well, we don't want anything bad to happen, nothing that might get in the way of your 'rehabilitation'."

So they were going to send him off somewhere with lots of 'parabiteamol, were they? Perhaps that would be his chance to escape! But where? Back to Jack? They would just catch him again there, and once the medicine and tablets ran out he would be a danger to all around him. So what could he do? Where could he go

Harry Pain suddenly remembered something else "Oh, and a friend of mine asked me to pass a message on to you. Says he knows you, a man by the name of Smithers."

"Smithers!" Alex cried happily

"So you do know him."

"Yeah!"

"Well he told me to pass onto you not to worry about Jack, he'd talked to him about what had happened to you..."

Alex laughed slightly.

"What's so funny?"

"Jacks a woman!"

**So, yeah, very short and nothing happened! Sorry about that... but at least I've got some important information out the way and next chapter things should actually start getting interesting and angsty and interesting and...yeah!**

**Please review!**

**Oh, and has any one read either of With the What Now's fanfics? They are both really good, if you haven't checked them out, you should do!**


	10. Here Comes Trouble

**Well, despite the slight set back I've managed to finish the chapter. I downloaded OpenOffice while at my aunt's house for Christmas day, as her house has a much better internet connection then ours. It still took a long time...**

**But I've got it now and am slowly getting used to it, though I still don't understand how I ended up replacing 'the' with 'achromatic', what does that even mean?**

**Since the picture link refused to show up in the AN, I'm going to stick it in my profile where you should actually be able to access it XD**

**Disclaimer: Nope, I'm still not Anthony Horowitz!**

**Recap: Alex's vampire side is now under control, thanks to some medicine that has come into being at a suspiciously fast pace. But it know means that MI6 deems Alex Rider to be safe enough to start his reintegration with the rest of society, but since they still wouldn't trust him to be anywhere near the general public, they are instead sending him to an SAS camp in The Lake District. Which of course, he's going to just love…**

_Here Comes Trouble_

Wolf slammed the door behind him and sat down heavily on the nearest bed, which just happened to be his own.

One pair of eyes watched him curiously but two others didn't even bother looking up. For a few seconds no one said anything, until Eagle spoke up. Without looking up from the battered paperback book he was reading, he removed a cigarette from his mouth and asked, "So, what did the sergeant want then?"

Finally having received the right dramatic cue, Wolf spat, "Cub!" While waving around a thin file above his head.

Calmly, as though he wasn't surprised, Eagle took another drag on his cigarette, turned the book upside down so he wouldn't lose his page and finally looked around at Wolf, his blank face and impenetrable dark grey eyes giving away nothing of what he was thinking. As usual.

"So he's gonna pay us a visit, is he?"

"Yes! They're sending him here to train. With us, again!"

Osprey glanced up from the gun he was cleaning with a rag so grubby that was probably just spreading the dirt around rather than getting rid of it.

He was a large, muscle bound man, with an arrogant look to his face and a lot more brains and charisma then first impressions might convey. He was the sort of person who others had always wanted to hang out with at school, not for his lovely personality because he could be a cruel and violent man when he felt like it, but because people thought that being associated with him made them seem cooler and stronger than they really were. This strange sort of gravitational pull he had that had started in the playground at primary school was still in as much effect today as ever.

"Cub...you've mentioned that name before, right?"

"Yeah." Replied Eagle. "He was the kid that Special Ops sent to train with us for a week or so...hmm, about a year ago. That was back when we were training at Brecon Beacons but were still SOD of MI6, not SAS. But Wolf can probably tell you more about him, can't you? Didn't you say you bumped into him again?"

The only man who hadn't said anything so far spoke up now. He went by the codename of Tiger and there was something about him, that though impossible to pinpoint, made the name seem very appropriate.

"A kid? What the hell do you mean? How old are we talking about here?"

"Uh..." Wolf opened the file he was still clutching and pulled out the three pages stapled together inside so that he could read them. "Says here he's fifteen. Must have been fourteen then last time round. Man, I didn't realise he was that young, did you, Eagle?"

"Yeah, I did" Came the short reply.

Wolf frowned. Eagle was always like this; he never minced his words and hardly ever seemed surprise. It was as though he had been able to see into the future all his life, and by now had got pretty bored of the talent.

Trying to straighten out the facts, Tiger said, "So you're telling me that MI6 sent a fourteen year old boy to Brecon Beacons for a few days?"

"Pretty much." Wolf replied.

"Ha! His parents probably used a load of money and special connections to get him in. They must have been real pissed off when he gave up." Osprey smirked.

That was a stupid theory, and one that made Tiger laugh. Osprey hated being laughed at and if it had been anyone else they would have been in real trouble. But this was Tiger and the two of them had been good friends for a long time now, always sticking up for each other, usually at the expense of someone else.

"No." Eagle stated bluntly. "That's completely and utterly illegal. No amount of money could get an under-age kid into SAS. You have to be sixteen just to join the army, remember? And as for special connections, well, you'd have to be royalty."

Wow, thought Wolf. Eagle rarely came out with so many words in a row. Not that he was thick, just that he liked to find out what everyone else knew on a subject, before revealing he held all the aces.

"But special operations sending a kid here isn't illegal at all? And anyway, he didn't give up, Os. Wolf pointed out quickly, using Osprey's nickname. "MI6 called him back in for some reason or other."

"But what would MI6 want with some little brat?" Osprey snorted derisively.

"Beats me." Eagle shrugged, "As I said, Wolf knows more than me. You said you ran into him again, didn't you?"

"Yeah." Wolf nodded. "One of the strangest things I've ever seen. And it wasn't so much as running he was doing, more like snowboarding down a mountain...on an ironing board."

Osprey and Tiger exchanged incredulous looks and Eagle smiled slightly to himself. Wolf made a surprisingly good story teller.

"An ironing board?"

"Yep. It was my first assignment as part of the SAS, Fox and Snake had already gone their own ways by then and Eagle was on a different assignment. We'd been told to keep an eye on the bottom of this mountain in France you see, there was some sort of academy at the top of it which MI6 suspected was connected to some strange goings on. You know what it's like with them. We were told that an agent of there's had managed to infiltrate the academy, we all thought he must be posing as a teacher or guard. We had been there just a few hours when a couple of land rovers appeared. They were acting suspiciously but before we could do anything about them, we spotted someone heading down the mountain side. Fast. Actually, more than one person, he was being chased. But by the time the ground levelled out he had managed to get rid of them, and they had been on snowmobiles and armed with guns by the sound of it! And man did they make big explosions when they crashed! I'm surprised neither of them caused an avalanche.

Well, none of us were in any doubt that the guy racing towards us must be the agent we had been sent to look out for, and here he was, doing all the work for us. But then those damn Land Rovers came out of hiding, the men inside armed with machine guns. We should have dealt with them while we had the chance, but how were we supposed to know what was going to happen next? Well the high ups later told us what they thought of that in very strong terms, but anyway, the agent saw the danger before we did and then suddenly this train went past in front of him and he somehow managed to use his momentum or something to actually land on top of the speeding train! Got him out of the way of the bullets, but unfortunately for him the train curved round and he didn't! Went flying off it and luckily for him he was caught by some fencing that, you know, sort of reduced the impact when he finally hit the ground...on his head. Though I guess he wasn't so lucky that the fencing had been made out of barbed wire…

The Land Rover men got away quickly and we were left with what we thought was a dead special operations agent. But surprisingly he was still alive, and more surprisingly he was just a kid! Most of the others had been at Brecon Beacon when Cub was, but I don't think anyone else recognised him. Though, he had had his hair cut a lot shorter.

And then, as the ambulance took him away, someone held up the snowboard he had used, except it obviously wasn't a snowboard, it was an honest to God ironing board!"

Tiger laughed slightly as he tried to imagine someone snowboarding down a mountain on an ironing board.

"Well that sounds weird." Osprey muttered grumpily.

"It was." Wolf confirmed, "He was all right and managed to be... persuaded to return to the academy to show us the location where a load of rich peoples' sons had been locked up. In fact, it was when I was trying to save his arse from some big ugly weight lifter type women..." Here Osprey let out a snort of disbelieving laughter. Wolf had to save this Cub kid from a woman? "that I ended up getting shot." Wolf concluded as he gestured vaguely towards where he had been hit by the bullet.

Changing the subject slightly, Tiger asked in a nonchalant way, "So...what does this teenage agent guy look like?" Wolf shrugged. "Ah, blondish?"

With a sigh Eagle stood up and headed over to the shorter, darker man. "Look, there's a picture attached to the file, isn't there?" Wolf glanced down. "Oh yeah, there is." With that he offered the paper up to Eagle, who took it and retreated back to his bunk.

Wolf had already skimmed through what little information was given in the file. A good chunk of information was simply listed as 'classified', which annoyed the Unit's leader, but didn't surprise him all that much. MI6 wasn't about to make all the sensitive information on their little pet spy available to just anyone, now would they?

Both Osprey and Tiger scowled at the way Eagle was given the information first, and not one of them, especially since it was Tiger who had asked about the boy's appearance to start with. But then again, their leader had known the other man for longer then the two of them, but still, they were supposed to be a unit, weren't they?

"Yup, fifteen years old, atheist, (well doesn't sound much like a religious guy anyway), British Caucasian, (same old, same old), heterosexual, (bet he gets lots of girls...)" Eagle muttered to himself as he read, then in a louder, jokey voice he told Wolf, "Says here he's straight, hard luck mate!"

Wolf, who had had a string of girlfriends and was in no way interested in members of his own gender, threw a boot at Eagle's head.

While the two of them were then fighting over the offending article of clothing, Osprey shot Tiger a look, but the younger man was purposefully avoiding his gaze while watching as Wolf tried to wrestle back his boot, and so missed it, as did the other two.

As Eagle was distracted, holding the boot as far away as possible from his Unit Leader as he could manage in the confined space of their barracks, Tiger took the opportunity to snatch up the file and return to his bunk with it.

Again Osprey tried to catch his eye, but seeing that that wasn't about to happen, he gave up in favour of lightly punching Eagle as a stray foot accidentally caught him in the arm.

It was the picture that Tiger was most interested in. Oblivious to the scuffle that had broken out in front of him, he studied the photograph. It was obvious from the direction of the boy's gaze that he had been aware of the camera, and from the slight frown on his face that he hadn't wanted his picture taken. It seemed pretty recent as well, as Cub appeared his full fifteen years at the very least. (In fact the photo had been taken just a day or two ago by Victor Stone.)

It showed a serious looking boy who, as Wolf had said, was blond, and with brown eyes that seemed just a little strange in a way Tiger couldn't quite put his finger on. Perhaps it was just the angle the picture had been taken at, or something reflecting into his eyes, or even just the effects of the lighting. His skin seemed pale and completely void of the spots and marks that people his age, particularly boys, spent all their time battling with. Without conscious thought, Tiger reached up a hand and brushed the skin along his hair line. Though there were no visible spots there, he could feel the slight bumps with his sensitive finger tips that made him fret so much. He had always been very self conscious of his looks. He felt slightly jealous of Cub already. Why should the boy have perfect skin when he himself had been plagued by mild acne as a teenager, something he had only grown out of a few years ago? It had, in his view, ruined his good looks at the time. He was proud of his handsome face, coppery brown hair and bright blue eyes, and getting lots of spots had terribly effected his self esteem.

As Wolf growled at Osprey and Eagle to grow up and give him back his boot, though in much stronger language than that, Tiger continued to study the photograph in his hands. The boy appeared to have relatively long eye lashes and a nice bone structure, but his slim lips and slightly chiselled looks meant that he could never been mistaken for a girl.

The more Tiger looked, the more he saw that he liked. At the SAS camp he was surrounded by large men as strong or stronger then him. They weren't his type at all. He had been bullied very badly as a child, and those bigger and more powerful than himself held no attraction for him. He always had to be the one in charge in a relationship, the dominant one, whether it was a man or women that he had set his eyes on this time, for both genders held their own appeal to him. He preferred slim, pretty, young and blond women who knew how to look after a man and would do all they could to impress him. And when it came to men he still liked them slim, pretty, young and blond, but liked it much better when they had never had a boyfriend before, or even better, when they were in denial that they could ever love another man. It made the chase so much more fun. But which ever gender, once he had impressed them with his looks and charms, and they had dually fallen for him, he would grow bored and go in search of new conquests, not caring who the broken hearted person he left behind was.

And now it appeared that among these ugly weeds, a young and delicate rose was about to make an appearance.

_'Adore the petals of the rose but watch for the serpent beneath.'*_

Once again Alex Rider was being grossly underestimated by someone with dark intentions, at their own peril. He was no 'delicate rose', he had survived far too much to ever be classed as 'delicate' and as for a 'rose', weren't roses well known for their sharp thorns? And of course, Alex was not some naive and vulnerable child for Tiger to toy with, he was in fact the true top predator, not Tiger or any other solider here. No matter how tough they were, it was the boy soon to join them who was far more dangerous then any of them.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Alex stifled a yawn. He had been sitting in this car with it's blacked out windows for around six hours now, with just one brief stop at a service station, and was now thoroughly bored. He wanted to ask how much longer it would take to reach their location up in the Lake-district, but there was a partition between him and the driver in front, similar to the ones in taxis, but a lot stronger, which made conversation awkward. Anyway, the driver didn't seem like a particularly chatty man. Serious and silent seemed to be the default setting for government men with dark glasses and guns tucked away where they think no one can see them.

With a sigh Alex leaned back and rested his head against the dark tinted window that allowed him to see about, but blocked him from sight. Though they were still on a main road, the surrounding countryside was starting to get hillier and craggier as they drove along, making the teenager assume that it couldn't be a great deal longer before they finally got there.

It felt so strange being trapped away on his own like this, but surrounded by life on all sides as other people in their own cars made their way about their normal lives. Even stranger had been driving through London, with its roads and pavements bustling with life. These people enjoying the mild spring weather had no idea that Alex was passing so close to them, now trapped as a creature they didn't even believe existed. For them nothing had changed, for him everything. He was classed as a threat to their very existence, and if anything went wrong at the SAS camp he would never be allowed to mingle with them ever again. Victor Stone had made it very clear as he explained the situation to Alex, a smug smile on his face, that if he hurt anyone, anyone at all while he was there, he would be deemed unfit to associate with the human race. He would be put down. From what 'Vicky' said, it was obvious that if he had been any other 15 year old boy, they would have never given him a chance. Vampires were the enemy, something to be studied, kept hidden from the public, experimented on if they could, and then killed. But he was Alex Rider, and it was their fault this had happened in the first place. Maybe letting him live on as a distorted, freakish version of himself was their way of apologising. Or perhaps they simply thought that he could be an even better weapon for them now, if he could control the vampire blood-lust inside him now. But if he was going to bite every neck he saw, what use would he be then? They might as well cut their losses and kill him off...

_'Did you hear about the Rider kid?' 'Oh yes, terrible business, hit and run accident they say' 'Yes, though no seems to have actually seen it happen. Apparently he was involved in some sort of drug gang. I bet it was one of their enemies that did it!' 'Really? Well then, I don't understand why that Jack women was so upset, its not as though she was even related to that delinquent child.' 'No, and I expect she will be off back to America after his funeral is out of the way, nothing more to keep her here.' 'Well! The rumour goes that she has to leave after the funeral, her visa expired years ago!' 'Really? Bloody foreigners! I also heard from somewhere or other that she had a big argument with a man at the funeral place. Wanted an open casket, but they wouldn't allow it.' 'I should hope so too, disgusting idea, I have never understood the appeal of having a dead corpse out on display, especially one that's been in an accident' 'A bit strange though, I mean, I've never been to an open casket funeral, but why would they not allow it? What have they got to hide, ay?' _

But as long as he was on his best behaviour, he should be fine, right? Not really... sure, he would live, but MI6 had him well and truly caught. He had considered running away once he got to the camp, but it appeared they had already thought of that, and so had told Victor to inform him that if he ran away, killed anyone, or gave away what he was to a large number of people, his life would be pretty much forfeited. They couldn't risk having him around if he was anything less then perfect.

And to help him stay in control they had supplied him with enough medication to keep a whole army of vampires calm, or at least that's what it felt like to Alex. But it reassured him. If he did have to escape for some reason or other, he would be able to stay in control for quite some time with all the Parabiteamol he had, both in liquid and tablet form.

Harry Pain had taken the time to carefully explain the dosages to him. He must take two teaspoonfuls when he first woke up, at midday and just before he went to bed, everyday. However, the power balance was still shifting inside him, so this was only a basic precaution. If he felt himself slipping into predator thoughts, or being much stronger than he was used to, or thinking of blood too much, he would have to swallow at least two of the tablets as soon as he could, more if the symptom refused to fade, but he should avoid taking more then three or four within one hour. They weren't entirely sure what the effects were. They were unlikely to kill him, but the more he suppressed the vampire side of himself, the more vulnerable he would become to the medicines affects.

Closing his eyes, Alex looked deep within himself, and like someone with a rotten tooth right at the back of their mouth, repeatedly poking it with his tongue, once again Alex could feel the sleeping power hidden within him. It was a strange sensation, being able to feel all those possibilities, all that danger right in the corner of his mind. Every time it made him flinch away, but like a painful tooth he didn't seem to be able to leave it alone. He felt as though he was baiting a sleeping lion, but as long as he stuck with the medicine, surely there was no reason for that side of him to wake up?

***I have no idea who originally wrote this quote I'm afraid.**

**There you go, please review! :3**

**I'm not sure how long its going to be until the next update, as I have a couple of exams coming up which I should really be revising for, as well as another fic I need to finish and at least two one-shots I have been planning to write for months and really need to get around to doing.**

**It's sort of funny, this is adventure/ angst type of thing, the other fanfic I've started is a really stupid parody, one that I've been meaning to do for about 6 months now is really depressing and the other one is... a dream. I often have really long and complex dreams, and a couple of months ago I had a strange one in which Alex featured. I forgot about it until I happened to come across it written down in my dream diary, and I really want to write it on computer now. Don't worry, it's no night mere or dodgy dream, just strange and weird, like all my dreams. XD**

**Remember to check out that equally strange and weird picture of AR in my profile...he he...**


	11. Meet the Meat

**Well quite a bit has happened in my little world since I last updated, my Mum almost decapitated one of our dogs with the electronic garage door, I got two exams over and done with, went to a hunt ball for the first time in my life and stayed up till about three in the morning, and I've also been a bit ill. When I say ill, I mean three days of constant, strong pain radiating from just above my hips, across my stomach and up under my ribs. It was agony and no amount of tablets did anything to help, even when I managed to keep them down. I've had this problem a couple of times but it was lasting longer then normal and I ended up in hospital (they were unusually busy so I had to wait over two hours for a bed), and they stuck one of those annoying things in my arm that you connect up to a drip hanging from a metal stand you have to take everywhere with you. They gave me something that finally reduced the pain and after an extremely boring overnight stay and been pocked and prodded my several doctors, they decided I had an infection and sent me off with some antibiotics. Though I feel fine now, I fear that the doctors only found part of the problem, for their solution doesn't really explain why I have had those exact same symptoms before.**

**Anyway, moving on, one thing I haven't got done is to finish any of the one-shots I told myself I must do before doing another chapter of this. But OBTTS is just so much fun to write...**

**Disclaimer: Oh, it never was and never will be mine, lalala, sing it with me now...**

**Recap: Well there that medicine stuff, and Tiger, rawr, and stuff... yeah...**

"Look whose arrived, men!" It was the gleeful tones of the Sergeant in charge of the base as he kicked the door to their bunk open. He was a tall, wiry man in his early forties with a ridiculous little moustache and thinning hair. He had a very high opinion of himself and a very low opinion of most of the men he commanded. This coupled with his rather sadistic nature had led to him being loathed by most of the people at the camp. And unfortunately for Alex, he had taken a strong and immediate dislike to the boy because he hated being kept in the dark, and most of the information on him had been confidential. Besides, why send a bloody little kid into a grown man's world? It wasn't his job to look after children, he was here to train SAS soldiers! So if the kid assumed he was going to get special treatment for being a special little boy, he was wrong.

"It's a little Cub come running back to K-unit for more training, play nicely now!" With that, he shoved Alex in the the small of the back, propelling him through the door. He was disappointed when instead of falling over, flat on his face, as he was supposed to, Cub's arms snapped out and he managed to snag the door frame with his finger tips, abruptly putting an end to his unexpected date with the floor.

But the Sergeant had already been turning to leave, he couldn't stop and kick him through with a cry of, "Get on with ya!", and so had to take solace in that what he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye was the kid's whole weight being held off the floor by his arms bent back in a rather painful looking position.

"Evening training exercise in twenty minutes, men!" The Sergeant barked out loudly as he walked away, not bothering to look around at K-unit as he did so.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Four grown men contemplated him in silence as Alex pulled himself back to standing. Glancing around he spotted his bag from where he had dropped it and picked it up, holding tight to it as though it could shield him from the gazes of the soldiers in front of him. There was an awkward pause until Wolf coughed to clear his throat and then said, "Well guys, this is Cub. You heard what the Sergeant said, he's going to be training with us for a while...again. Cub, you've already met me and Eagle. This is Osprey and Tiger." He gestured towards the two of them in turn.

Osprey didn't give a reaction, but Tiger muttered, "Hi."

_Well this could have gone worse, I guess. _Alex thought to himself. So far it appeared as though Wolf was going to act a little nicer towards him then before. He had introduced Alex as Cub rather then Double-0-Nothing, hadn't he? Perhaps after seeing a little of what he did at Point Blanc, he would cut Alex a little bit of slack? Alex wasn't about to take that possibility for granted, however. Wolf could go nasty any second now. So far as he could tell, Eagle was the same as ever, quiet and a little standoffish.

And first impressions of this 'Osprey' man were not that promising. The look on his face indicated that he wasn't exactly pleased to meet Alex. The two of them were obviously going to get on like a house on fire... Alex suspected he would be the one to get burnt.

As for the last man? Tiger had said 'Hi.' which was at least a start, but the way he was staring so intensely at Alex, as though by doing so he could read Alex's most intimate thoughts, was slightly off putting.

"Hi." Alex replied vaguely with a jerky little nod.

"You're at the back." Wolf told him, indicating to the back of the ugly little cabin he would have to share with them from now until...who knew? For a second, Alex couldn't work out what he meant. Then he spotted the end of a metal bed sticking out from around the corner. The room was L shaped, with the bottom of the L being very large and fat and a door leading off to what was likely a very small bathroom, stopping it from being rectangular shaped instead. The tiny miniature room within a room hid part of Alex's new bed out of sight. There wasn't much room behind there but it had obviously been stuffed there because there simply wasn't anywhere else to put it. The rest of the room was taken up by the other men's bunk beds and some large lockers, like the ones Alex had seen in movies and TV programs that featured American high schools, except these were much more battered and old.

He made his way over to his bunk and placing his bag on it, sat down. There was only a thin mattress on it an the whole thing creaked ominously underneath his weight. Wonderful. It was clearly going to provide him with many nights restful sleep...

"Welcome to K-Unit's palace! We've got bunks, lockers,a floor, a roof, a few walls and even a crappy little thing with a loo and sink in it..." Alex heard someone, Tiger he thought, mutter bitterly. Alex looked up and was once again fixed by that x-ray stare the man had.

Uncomfortably, Alex shrugged slightly. "I've seen worse."

"Ooh, tough boy!" he heard the other unfamiliar soldier, Osprey grumble to himself, not caring if everyone heard what he had to say.

Alex frowned for a second, then decided to just let it go. There was no point in responding, he wasn't allowed to get into any fights, now would he? Alex didn't think that MI6 would be all that merciful if they heard he had ended up murdering one of his unit on his first evening there over such a childish comment.

"So, Alex..." Wolf started, trying to ease the awkward tension in the room. "How come your back here?"

"Classified." Alex sighed in a resigned sort of way. "I'm not allowed to tell anyone, just like last time."

A derisive snort escaped Osprey and glancing round at him briefly, Alex saw resentment and dislike flash in his light brown eyes.

"The Sergeant said you were here for more training" Wolf remarked. A smile smile tugged at Alex's lips. "Yeah, that's pretty much-well, yeah. Just for a bit more training really."

That was obviously not the whole story, but no one, even Osprey, asked further. They all had secrets, some more darker then others...

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

_He is not one of us  
He has never been one of us  
He is not part of us  
Not our kind*_

"As some of you have noticed, we have a little kiddy in our midst. His name is Cub and you are to treat him with the same love, care and respect as you would any other SAS soldier. However, because he is so 'special' his pack will be slightly lighter than all of yours. I do so hope this will not in anyway harm your first brotherly bonding session, men."

Alex glared down at his new, but obviously very old boots, not trusting himself to look at the Sergeant as he shouted his poisonous words to all the soldiers taking part in the evening exercise, which was pretty much everyone at the camp. And as for Alex being in their 'midst', that wasn't exactly true. He was actually standing at the edge of the large group of men, his unit standing nearby, well not really all that close by. Osprey had disappeared off altogether, as though the sight of Alex was too disgusting to stand, and the other three were a little way off.

The little knot of tension and anxiety that had been building up inside him all day was worse then ever, making him feel as though he might just throw up. It had been bad at Brecon Beacon, a fourteen year old thrown in at the deep end with fully grown soldiers after everything he had believed about his life had been proven to be a lie. They had disliked him, he had been alone and out of place, like a minnow among sharks. But this time he was secretly the shark, and they were all big bad fish who mistakenly thought of themselves as lords of the ocean. In a way, he was closer to them then before. A year older. A year wiser. Right? Most likely many of them had been shot at, threatened and attacked, so perhaps in that sense he wasn't so different to them any more. But really when it came to bad experiences, the ones he had suffered during the last year or so, far outstripped any that these soldiers may have faced in their entire lives. And then there was that other thing, the dirty little secret that had slammed down a steel portcullis between him and the rest of humanity. He could see them pass by, reach out his hand and feel almost as though he was part of their world, but he could never again truly join them.

Was it that that was making him feel so sick and angry and useless and bitter and sad and lonely? He felt so out of place, the beast boy trapped with the human men. He didn't belong here, in this camp, in the Lake-district, in the country, in the world. He felt so woefully out of place, so anxious and self conscious that no amount of mental threats to himself seemed able to lift the terrible burdening weight of doom and gloom off his shoulders.

He might have stood out as the sole boy among men, but he felt as though he should have stood out even more with pulsing red lights surrounding him, a warning to everyone there to keep their distance. He was used to putting on different personas, pretending to be someone he was not. Why couldn't he just do that now? But the gulf between what he really was and how he wished he could behave was just too great. Oh, he would act nonchalant and blasé about the whole situation, but he knew that cover-up would be a thin mask indeed and feared how easily someone else might accidentally, or on purpose, rip it away. There was murder and power lurking at the edge of his mind, would simple medicine be enough to keep it at bay forever? What if he became immune to the medication? What if it ran out? What if someone cut themselves in front of him and started to bleed crimson blood?

_Dark gushes of it, slithering down pale, vulnerable skin, its taste in his mouth, slaking his thirst, giving him power... _

With a shudder Alex reached into a pocket of the slightly too big army regulation jacket he was now wearing. He had already slipped a foil sheet filled with Parabiteamol in there. While the Sergeant explained to them where they were going to be going for 'this evenings' little stroll', Alex surreptitiously checked no one was looking at him. He saw a curious glance or two in his direction but decided he would risk it taking the packet out his pocket, the little tablets it contained rattled slightly. He pushed the under side of a tablet in the middle until it tore through the foil above and then popped the Parabiteamol into his mouth, swallowing it dry with a grimace. He hated swallowing tablets without water, especially large ones like these ones. It was always better to swallow tablets down with water, it got them to your stomach faster and more comfortably. And perhaps it would have stopped Alex getting a nasty metallic taste on his tongue.

Alex looked up and quickly pocketed the tablets again as the men around him started to move off. The Sergeant must have stopped speaking and told them to get on with it without Alex even noticing.

"Come on Cub!" A voice growled from behind him as Alex looked around, trying to work out what to do.

It was Wolf. He shoved a large backpack at Alex, which he caught just before it fell to the ground. "Hurry up and put it on! We are going to be last at this rate."

Osprey appeared suddenly, their other two Unit members a little way behind him. "And if we end up getting kitchen duty because you messed up on us, I will kill you." He promised angrily.

Oh dear. Alex had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts, he must have somehow missed the Sergeant saying this would be a race. But looking at the others around them, no one had even left yet, so what was all the fuss?

Wolf disappeared and then quickly returned again, a map and compass held tightly in his hands. By then Alex had got the backpack on. It was as heavy as it looked and he was just relieved that he wouldn't have to be carrying ones quite as heavy as all the others'.

"Right." Their Unit leader announced in a tone of voice that said 'I have come to a decision and your not going to like it'. "It's a case of taking the far too long hilly route and coming last or taking the still-very-long-break-your-neck mountainous one and risk loosing a unit member, but probably not coming last."

"'Break-your-neck'" Eagle replied affirmatively, showing which he would choose. Not that he really had a choice, it was clear Wolf had already chosen the more strenuous route.

A heavy hand slapped down on Alex's already over burdened shoulders, threatening to make him crumple into a heap on the floor. Startled he looked up into Tiger's grinning face. "Well it was nice meeting you, kid." Osprey gave a low laugh and Alex frowned as Tiger moved away to check the map over with Wolf. It appeared that Alex was the team member who had just been silently voted for as both the most likely to die and the most expendable.

"Planning time's over girls, get a move on!" The Sergeant out. With a low curse Wolf gestured to his Unit and they all headed off at a fast pace, Alex at the back and just hoping he would be able to keep up.

***Not one of Us- I don't know the artist**

**Sorry about the short chapter, but at least the main plot is now under way! **

**As ever, I have no way of safely telling you when the next chapter should be up, with school, homework and drama club taking up my time and parents who believe that weekends are for working around the house and out in the yard, not spending time typing up fanfiction!**


	12. The Not So Calm Before the Storm

**Once again I have neglected those one-shots I really need to finish in favour of this fic, so I hope you enjoy this chapter!**

**(P.s, be warned there is a little swearing in this chapter)**

**Disclaimer:Haven't you got the message yet people? I don't own the series! ;o;**

**Recap: Upon arriving at the SAS camp at the Lake-district, Alex soon finds himself on a long hike through the countryside with a heavy backpack and four SAS soldiers who seem to be under the impression he wont last the night.**

_The Not So Calm Before the Storm_

The Lake-district, thanks mostly to glacial action thousands of years ago, was a a distinctly hilly part of England. It was also a place of particular wild, natural, beauty. And sheep. There was a lot of hill-sheep farming on the more baron areas. Not that Alex spotted any sheep on his trek, or had much of a chance to appreciate the landscape.

Ian had brought him here once before, long ago, so the type of terrain was at least slightly familiar to him. This area wasn't though, a huge amount of the of the local vicinity was an absolute no-go area for tourists and farmers alike and reserved for army training. SAS army training, to be precise. But that didn't stop the odd hiker ignoring the leaflets and large warning signs, though, and ending up where they shouldn't be. Luckily for everyone, this was a very rare occurrence.

And not one that happened that evening.

Alex trudged along at the back, following his unit a little way behind them. He had figured this was the best way to stay out of trouble, and unlike Osprey he felt no need to argue with Wolf over which hill to climb or which valley to enter next.

He was certainly glad his backpack was lighter than the other's as they clambered over rocks and stepped over streams, but was sure the landforms hadn't been this extreme when he had last visited the lake-district. He remembered, though, that mostly he and Ian had stuck to the paths provided, even when they had gone on the tougher walks. The local council wasn't keen on tourists trampling all over everywhere after all. But here there were no carefully flattened paths or stone steps to take. And of course, the government would have wanted a more challenging area then normal to test their troops. Add to that that the place least suited to farming would be the obvious choice and he built up a reasonable explanation as he tramped along behind the other members of K-Unit. There was no one else in sight, they had all gone different ways or simply faded out of sight. This meant that they had no idea how far ahead or behind other units might be, and so Wolf had insisted on a punishing fast pace.

Stumbling along after the others, lost in his own thoughts, Alex reached once again with his mind to test how strong that other side of him was at the moment. With a jolt he realised he could sense dark thoughts stirring at the back of his mind. Quickly he fumbled with the tablets in his pocket and reached behind himself to where of bottle of water was residing in an open side pocket of his backpack. Glad of it to wash the large, metallic tablets down, Alex swallowed two Parabiteamols.

They worked incredibly fast. Within about five minutes or so Alex heard the distant whispers recede again as the vampire instincts inside him faded away into slumber once again.

It was a couple of minutes later that he suddenly realised how tired he felt. It was as though all his energy and strength had been sucked out of him and it became a, literally, very up hill struggle to just keep up with his Unit.

Glancing around, Wolf noticed this and called back to him, "Hurry up Cub!" They paused briefly, Osprey making snide remarks all the while, to allow him to catch back up with them.

"Just knew it, he's going to make us loose! Well if he does, he can do kitchen duty by himself, I'm not going to pay just because he's too weak to stand the pace. Cant they just send him back home? He doesn't belong here!"

No one replied in agreement to Osprey's ongoing rant, but neither did they tell him he was wrong or tell him to shut up.

"Sorry." Alex muttered, out of breath as they moved off again, unable to come up with a decent excuse for why he had fallen behind, he couldn't exactly tell the truth, now could he?

It gave something more for him to ponder on though. Though this hike was of course hard work, he had been doing fine up until then. Up until he had taken the tablets. Alex had been warned not to take too many, or else they could start having a negative effect. But he had been told to take two at a time, like he just had, hadn't he? But no more than that within an hour. How long had it been since he took a tablet just before they set off? He was sure they had been walking for over an hour now though, so why was he feeling so incredibly weak now?

He thought about it until he came up with a workable theory. He had been informed that the medicine not only dispelled the blood-lust, but also effected all other symptoms of Vampirism. That included added strength. The dark whispers in the corner of his mind had only been very quiet, and only noticeable when he had consciously sort out that side of himself. So perhaps two tablets had been too much, they had quelled his vampire side, but because of the slight overdose, eaten into his normal 'human' strength as well? Not that he actually was human now, or had ever been able to class himself as 'normal' for that matter.

Feeling slightly depressed that the Parabiteamol wasn't quite the miracle cure he had first thought it to be, and annoyed with himself at having come over as unable to stand the pace on his very first evening, Alex decided he would have to be more careful about how many tablets he took if he was part way through, or about to start a training exercise. There was no way he was going to let the likes of Osprey think he was a weakling. Perhaps if he let just a little of his supernatural strength come through, as long as the need for blood didn't become too overpowering? It could be a risky move.

Then again, either way was risky, on one hand he could take lots of tablets and keep the effects of Vampirism at bay, but become as weak and unable to defend himself as a new born kitten (or more appropriately, cub). Or he could take less and excel at all the exercises, proving to everyone here what idiots they were in underestimating him, but risk the chance that he might accidentally get carried away and try biting one of them. It was a disgusting thought, that one. Imagine biting one of these men and drinking their blood? Alex pulled a face at the thought of it, though luckily no one else noticed as they were all in front of him.

Of course, there was a third option that wasn't really an option at all. He could just stop taking the medicine altogether, give in completely to his blood thirsty side and then most likely kill everyone here before being tracked down by the government and get killed. Hmm...perhaps not.

"Almost there!"

Wolf's call jerked Alex from his reverie and brought his thoughts back to the current situation. He realised he had fallen behind again, and, panting slightly, he rushed up to join the others where they stood on the top ridge of a particularly large and rugged hill.

"According to these coordinates, it should be right in front of us! Right there!" Alex heard Wolf say loudly, in an angry voice this time.

Alex made it to the top of the ridge and peered down to see what everyone was looking at. A lake. Well, this was the Lake-district, wasn't it?

In fact, they had hiked up the weathered edge of an arête and were now looking down into a corrie created by a glacier long ago. Freeze thaw had long since turned the side of the bowl-like land formation they were standing on into a mass of broken and pointed rocks. There was no way they would be able to climb down that way.

But still, that didn't matter as it appeared they had read the coordinates wrong somehow.

"No, it definitely says it should be right there." Wolf barked at Osprey, stabbing a finger down onto the map in his hands and then down at the lake.

"Well you must have heard them wrong then." Osprey argued.

As they argued, Alex turned to Eagle who was nearest to him and asked quietly, "Uh, what exactly are they looking for?" Being part of the unit, it would have made more sense for him to say 'we', not 'they'. But since he did not in fact feel like an actual member of the unit, a feeling that the rest of K-Unit most likely shared with him, if nothing else, 'they' appeared the most appropriate to him.

"A flag." Came the short but not grudgingly given answer.

Alex scanned the land and lake down below once again, noting that despite the long evenings they were now getting, it was starting to get a little dark.

"Oh, you mean that flag?" No one heard him.

Alex glared briefly at their backs, all that could be seen of the rest of K-Unit as they studied the map, still arguing about it.

In resolute tones, Tiger announced. "Yep, you must of heard the coordinates wrong."

"No I didn't!" Wolf replied angrily through gritted teeth, a slit second before Alex said loudly, "No he didn't."

At this the others suddenly seemed to remember Cub.

"Yeah, you would take his side, wouldn't you?" Muttered Osprey darkly.

"No, look," replied Alex, pointing to a small outcrop of light grey rock jutting out of the dark blue/grey water below them. Affixed to it was several small, black flags.

With a small laugh, Tiger clapped an arm around Alex's back, saying, "Well done, Cub!"

Unfortunately, Alex had been leaning forward on the edge of the arête at the time and hadn't been expecting a strong arm thumping into him.

Alex let out a completely involuntary yelp of surprise as he suddenly pitched forward. He would have tumbled straight down the jagged corrie side if Tiger hadn't managed to snatch hold of a strap on his backpack.

However, this did not stop his decent entirely, simply sent him crashing down slightly and backwards into the rocky wall. One of his feet met with an outcrop of rock, twisting it painfully but stopping his decent.

He stayed there, wide eyed and shocked for a second until Tiger grabbed another strap in his other hand and hauled Alex bodily back onto the ledge. He ended up in an unceremonious heap at Tigers feet, and without thinking about it, accepted the proffered hand to help drag him back to his feet. He stumbled slightly to the side as he did so, the backpack he wore shifting to one side and setting him off balance. Again Tiger was there to help him, steadying him.

"Sorry! I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" Tiger told him, his bright blue eyes wide with honest shock and regret.

"Ah, I'm fine, really. I'm just glad you caught me, that's all." Alex replied, relieved laughter evident in his voice.

Wolf, who had started forward as Alex had fallen, but would have been much too late to catch him, let out a sigh of relief. "Tiger, please don't try and kill Cub again."

Alex was sure he heard Osprey grumble under his breath, "Huh! Do us all a favour and just don't save him next time." This drew a dark look from both Wolf and Tiger.

Osprey looked up at both of them innocently and asked in an equally innocent manner, "What?"

Alex ignored him, his breathing and heart rate still faster then normal after his unexpected brush with death. His ankle hurt, as did his arms where his backpack straps had dug into him as Tiger had pulled him up. However, it was this very backpack that had stopped his back crashing into rugged rock, as well as given something for Tiger to grab onto and thus help rescue him by, so he wasn't about to complain about it.

Nor did he complain as pain in his ankle made him hobble slightly as he trudged after the rest of the unit as they made their way down the side and to the lake below. By the time they had done, the pain in Alex's ankle had faded to small twinges, much to his relief.

The five of them walked up to the lake edge and peered at the small island sticking out of it, and the small flags sticking out of that. Then they looked round at each other, followed a few seconds later by all eyes being on Alex.

"What? No way!"

"Well someone's got to do it." Tiger said, pointing out the obvious.

"Why me? You just pushed me off a cliff, remember?"

The regret of a few minutes ago forgotten, Tiger answered, "Yeah, but I caught you, didn't I?"

"You're not scared of water, are you?" Osprey asked mockingly.

"No..." Alex admitted.

"You can swim, can't you?"

"Course."

"Well then, what's the hold up?"

Holding back a plaintive whine of, "Why me?" Alex sighed and looked round at them all seeing that there was no help forthcoming.

"Just think of it as your initiation back into K-Unit." Wolf informed him cheerfully.

"Right." Alex muttered mutinously, and then, having come to the conclusion that there was nothing else for it, repeated in a more determined voice, "Right."

With that he dumped his backpack and set off around the rocky lake edge, looking for the place where the little flag island was closest to the shore. Deciding on a spot he looked down at the ground and saw a fresh foot print in the mood at the edge of the lake. Clearly they weren't the first to reach here, but the fact that there were still several flags left showed they couldn't possibly be the last either, which was reassuring.

Resigned to his fate, Alex quickly stripped off his shoes, socks, trousers and jacket, leaving him in a short sleeved top and boxer shorts. There came a wolf whistle (presumably not from Wolf himself) from the other side of the bank, followed by a burst of laughter.

Angry, and just wanting to get the whole trial over and done with, Alex stepped forward. His toes sunk into sun-warmed mud, but another step brought him into the shockingly cold water. Not wanting to show any weakness, he strode forward until it was deep enough to swim, gasping as the water, freezing cold despite the late spring sunshine that had been beating down on it all day, came into contact with his chest. Striking out with fast, efficient strokes, it didn't take long for Alex to reach the island. He scrambled roughly over the rocks and grabbed one of the small black flags out of the holder keeping them up. For a second he thought about throwing the rest into the water to make sure that K-Unit couldn't possibly be the last back. But that simply wasn't the way he operated, so Alex quickly dismissed the idea.

He was just about to make his way back into the water when he heard a shout. Looking up he saw another unit suddenly appear.

"Flag! Get us a flag, will ya?" A voice hollered over to him. K-Unit shouted something at them that was probably a ruder version of 'Bugger off and get your own.' But Alex wasn't about to do anything they wanted at the moment, not after they sent him out here, so shivering as the evening breeze blew against him, Alex snatched up another flag and swam back to the shore, being careful to not get mud on himself on the way out.

He pulled off the soaking wet t-shirt plastered to him, and swapped it for his jacket, which he then zipped up to try and help warm himself up and also to hide the scars he didn't want to have to explain. There were scars on his legs as well of course, which he quickly covered up with combat trousers pulled on over wet underwear. Just as he sat down on a rock, trying to wrestle socks onto wet feet, the two units reached him.

The stranger's came over, one of them thanking him for getting them a flag and saving one of their members an icy meeting with the cold water, whilst another snatched the flag up securely and backed away from K-Unit in case they tried throwing it back into the water.

Osprey gave first them, then Alex a dirty look and told him angrily, "You shouldn't have got it for them, you little bastard."

"Hey, he was just helping us out." Pointed out one of the newcomers, a calm looking man with short golden-blond hair.

"Exactly!" Osprey spat.

"Clam down Os." Tiger said resting a hand briefly on the other man's shoulder. He shook it off grumpily but said no more on the matter.

Tiger then introduced Alex to the other unit, a grin on his face."R-Unit, this is Cub. Cub, this is Bob, Liar, Buzz and Dawg."

Alex couldn't help letting out a snort of laughter. R-Unit all scowled at Tiger, apart from the blond man that he had referred to as Liar, who rolled his eyes and then gave their real names. "I'm Lion, this is Bobcat, Buzzard and Dog."

All but Buzzard, a short man with hair cut even shorter then most of the other men's, said hello to him. Buzzard ignored him and then wondered off to have a quite conversation with Osprey. From the way the two of them glanced in Alex's direction every now and again, Alex figured that he was most likely their subject of conversation.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Alex collapsed back onto his bunk, which creaked under his weight, and let out a small sigh of relief that he was finally dry again and able to rest.

R-Unit had soon split off from them, leaving a decidedly soggy Cub to the tender loving care of K-Unit. It had been clear to Alex as he walked along, trying wring out of much water from his hair as he could and shivering in the cool evening wind, that Osprey had not approved of his actions. Though, it occurred to him that even if Alex had saved his life, Osprey still would have had nothing good to say about his newest team member. There was nothing Alex could ever do to change the older man's hatred towards him, it had been a vicious and instinctive dislike that had sprung up before Cub had even had chance to actually give him a proper reason to dislike him.

Wolf, who had also not been particularly taken with Alex when he first met him, but now had some level of grudging understanding of him, even if not actual respect for him, was harder to read. Alex had the feeling that he had disapproved of Alex helping out another unit like that, but it had also seemed as though Wolf was on friendly terms with Lion, who was R-Units leader. Perhaps this was the part of the reason Wolf was holding his silence, despite the grumpy aura that had seemed to surround him. He had had no idea what Eagle thought, being as impassive and quiet as he was. Tiger hadn't said anything on the matter though, just locked eyes with Alex until he had grown uncomfortable of the stare and looked away, unable to work out what the unreadable look on his face had meant.

Tiger seemed a nice enough guy though, even if his constant stares made Alex feel slightly jumpy and paranoid that his secret had been worked out, for he had offered Alex his own jacket to help keep him warm, something that he had graciously declined but then come to regret.

But he was back at camp now, and had managed to grab a quick shower by himself and then get completely dried off, which had been a relief.

He stretched now, wondering where the rest of his Unit was. After finding out that they had not come last, but in fact third and having handed in their flag and equipment, each had gone their own way, leaving Alex to track down the shower block by himself.

He decided now would be a good time to sort out his few belongings into the battered locker nearest his bed. He paused, though, when he felt a tangle of wires and brought out a black I-pod. He stared at it in confusion. Sure he had an I-pod of his own, but he had left it behind at home and had been unable to return to get it since all this trouble started. Besides, it was the wrong colour. Perplexed he turned it over in his hands, wondering where it had come from. Had someone else in his unit accidentally dropped it in? He couldn't see how that would be possible, his bag had been fully zipped off the whole time. Having no better ideas, he turned it on and watched the screen come to life. Straight away it came up with a song, labelled as 'She Knows Now' from the album 'Good Look With the Future' by a band called 'Technology Rocks'.

His quizzical look turning to positive suspicion, Alex fumbled for the ear phones and then pressed play. Immediately a pre- recorded message started up.

"Hello old boy, I wasn't able to give you any gadgets this time I'm afraid, as you aren't on any sort of official mission, but I've had this prepared for you for some time, as a little thank you for all you've done to help the human race. I had planned on making it able to explode, an 'I-explode', you know, but MI6 didn't approve... utterly typical of them I'm afraid. It appears they didn't want to make you any more dangerous then you are already...then again, they did send you off to an SAS camp full of hand-grenades and machine-guns and such, but please, don't let me go give you any ideas!

The best I could do in the situation was to make your I-pod bullet proof, water proof, flame proof, acid proof, repeated blow from a blunt instrument proof, fall from a tall building proof and all sorts of other proofs too, as I know what you teenage boys are like! It's also pre-programmed to respond to your touch alone, so any would-be thieves will find it useless. In fact, I would advise you keep it away from others, as it tends to electrocute people it doesn't recognise if they handle it for too long. I also took the liberty of copying all the songs off your old I-pod onto here, along with some recently released tunes, load of rubbish the lot of them, if you ask me... But there you go. Oh, and make sure you take full advantage of the nice weather we are having at the moment, This I-Pod has solar-panels on the back!

I'm sure I will see you again Alex, just stick to the medication and for gods sake, no matter how much you get shouted at, no eating your superiors! It's just not the done thing in the SAS.

Oh, and by the way, I wouldn't bother trying to listen to this message again it will have simply disappeared because we can't have others somehow managing to listen in to it, now can we? So I hope you were paying proper attention!

Goodbye old chap, and good luck.

Oh, P's, read the postcard."

With that the message ended and an exclamation mark inside a triangle flashed up, saying 'track not found'. Well. That was that. Alex was thankful to Smithers though, he might not have been able to do anything to help him right now, but at least it showed there was someone out there who wasn't about to abandon him just because of what had happened to him.

He put the I-pod aside and routed around for the postcard Smithers had enigmatically mentioned. He soon found it and gave the front, with its image of London's Big Ben on a bright summers day, a searching look. Unable to stop anything out of the ordinary with it, he flipped the card over. On the back was a short, cramped message in Jack's handwriting, adorned with little emoticons scribbled next to the words.

_MI6 finally got round to telling me that you caught a contagious disease o.o. They won't even let me see you! ;o; Don't worry though, even if you grow two heads or sprouted fur, I will __always,__ be waiting here for you, __no matter __what. I can't believe this is all the room MI6 allowed for me to write to you though. T.T You've not become allergic to paper, have you? -Jack XXX_

Alex couldn't help the small, sad smile that tugged at his lips. She knew. She knew what he was. But she still loved him, faithful to the last. But of course, Jack couldn't possibly know just how sick he was. Sick and twisted, soulless and evil. Pure bloody murder. Well, he would be without the medicine. It was the only thing that stood between him and the monster within. Between life and death.

His expression turned to fierce determination as he stared down at Jack's handwriting without reading a single word of it. He made a promise, then and there, to both himself and Jack. He would return to her one day, no matter how long it took, or what suffering he had to go through. None of that mattered. He would keep on taking the Parabiteamol, keeping the beast at bay, and he wouldn't let anyone work out what he was. They could beat and torture him for all they liked, he wouldn't give them a reason to put him down!

But what Alex didn't realise was that in that moment, his eyes didn't just glint with determination, but were also momentarily flooded with red, as part of the defence mechanisms that came into play when a vampire is feeling particularly strong emotions.

He also had no idea that he would, one day in the near future, be forced to break his promise about not giving MI6 a reason to put him down in quite a spectacular and bloody way.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

"So" started Osprey, leaning back against a tree and taking a drag on his cigarette, "You like him, don't you?"

Tiger shifted uncomfortably wishing he could have a cigarette too, but knowing that it had been for the best that he had quit a couple of years ago.

"Well...yeah."

Osprey snorted in disgust, throwing his cigarette butt to the ground and crushing it beneath his feet in an overly violent way.

"Don't know what you see in him."

"You never do."

"Course not. Cos I'm straight."

The two of them had been good friends with each other for some time now, their friendship sealed by the dirty secrets each knew the other hid from the rest of the world. They trusted each other because they had to, both had found out things that could utterly ruin the other, and if one let a secret slip, the other was sure to bring his friend down with him.

"And you don't like him, do you?"

"Course not, I mean, what the fuck does MI6 think it's doing, sending a kid here? Bloody stupid idea if you ask me. That cocky little bastard doesn't belong here."

Tiger could see that Osprey was just acting as he typically did, hating anything strange and new, anything that threatened his place in the world in anyway at all, anything he didn't understand.

"Sexy cocky little bastard." Tiger replied, though he hadn't thought Cub had acted cocky or like a bastard at all.

Osprey let out another sound of disgust, partly at his words, but mostly at the dreamy look that had suddenly appeared on Tiger's face.

"You want to hurt him, don't you?" The copper haired man asked suggestively, before laughing at the look on Osprey's face.

"I mean like, you want to teach him a lesson, don't you?"

Unable to tell if Tiger's words still had sexual connotations or not, but feeling aggressive now, Osprey found himself curling his hands into fists.

"No. Well, yeah, maybe. I mean, not like... though...that cocky little bastard needs showing whose in charge here!" He had always been one to settle things with his fists...

"Good." Replied Tiger with a deceptively charming smile.

"Uh...what?" His friend asked, confused. "I thought you liked the guy?"

"Oh, I do, I do. But will you do me a favour? Hurt him for me."

Still Osprey stared at him as though he had gone insane.

Seeing this as a cue to explain, Tiger went on, "You see, you hate him, I like him. There's a way we can both use this to our advantage. You see, he appears to be a pretty independent type of guy. If you just happened to whack him round the head one day for doing something stupid, I very much doubt he would tell anyone. But if it were to escalate perhaps... he's just a kid, I'm sure he would confide in someone if they were to ask the right questions, offer comfort. And I would make sure I'm that person. You be the bad cop, be as aggressive as you like, I'll be the good cop, the one he runs to to be protected from the big bad wolf, the one he comes to trust... the one he comes to feel as though he owes a favour or two..."

"What if we're caught?" Osprey asked bluntly.

Tiger replied in placating tones, "We wont be, we wont be. I will make sure he believes the more people who find out he can't even stand up for himself, the worse things will get. You know I'm good at that sort of thing."

"Yeah, manipulation and mind games." The other man growled, folding his arms and wondering if Tiger was trying to manipulate him right that minute. Most likely, but he didn't care, his friend was always coming up with clever little schemes to get his own way and Osprey had never come to any harm because of them. Yet...

"Yeah, OK, what ever." He agreed dismissively, reaching in his pocket for another cigarette.

"You'll do it then?" Tiger asked with a sweet smile.

"Sure. As long as we don't get caught..."

"We wont, trust me."

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Later that night, as Tiger crept past Alex on his way to the loo (mearly an excuse), he paused to stare down at Alex, fast asleep on his bunk. He studied every aspect of the boys face, trying to commit everything he saw to memory, from the blond hair turned to silver by a full moon that appeared to shine in through the window and down onto Cubs sleeping form like a soft spotlight, to his lips, devoid of the slight, pained frown that they had sported that evening while he was awake. He really was cute, Tiger decided, his heart full of longing and joy at the new toy fate appeared to have brought for him. Just for him, no one else... Tiger had a very possessive personality, as well as a very obsessive one. And unfortunately for both Tiger and alike Cub, Alex was his new fixation. Both of them would come to suffer from his decision to try and pursue the boy who was both a reluctant spy and a reluctant vampire, but who would be a far far more reluctant lover, for there was no way that he would ever accept Tiger's advances.

**Worried? Well if your not you sure should be, cos I am a bit. For my sanity, Alex's safety and Tigers life. Well, actually, who cares about Tiger? He's a bad bad man. If you don't hate him yet, you should do soon. Same with Osprey. Their lives might not have been all roses, but I don't think they deserve any sympathy.**

**So I'm afraid things are going to get worse for Alex from now on on several different fronts. But I think its best to re-state here, that I promise Alex is not going to suddenly go gay and there certainly wont be any sex in this fic, consented or not. I just couldn't write that. Also rest assured that Tiger's plan isn't exactly going to work out perfectly... but beyond that I'm not going to give anything more about the plot away. Apart from that there will probably start to be more swearing. I don't like swearing at all, but putting myself in my character's minds (not always a nice place) I know that there is no getting away from the fact, that they would swear. In fact, they would swear way more then I've put in, but I'm raining them back a little. Wonderful, yeah? T.T**

**Thank you for reading, please review if you have at least one nice comment to say. (Constructive criticism is fine, Flaming is just plain rude and pointless, it won't have any effect at all on how I write the story.) **


	13. Then the Heavens Open, But Not for You

**Once again it's taken me a lot lot lot longer then I would have liked to update, but to be honest I've just had so much school and exam related work to do that I really haven't had the time to write fanfiction, sorry! (Finally broken up for the summer now though, yay!)  
Of course, the big change since I last updated is the release of Scorpia Rising. Yeah, that's how long it is since I last updated T.T. I won't state what I think of the events that went on in the book, here, because there's still a small chance someone reading this hasn't read SR yet (hurry up, lazy butt!) and I wouldn't want to ruin it for anybody. However I'm faced with probably having to go through all my old chapters, removing the SR teasers I posted up, because I have a feeling anyone starting to read this fic after SR's release will probably be like 'Urgh, these clues are pathetic and lame, this fic must be really old, I'm not gonna bother reading it.' However, due to my work load, I'm not sure when I'm going to get round to doing it...**  
**  
When it comes to books I've never been one for just pretending a whole book or chapter or death or relationship, etc never happened. No matter what happens, I usually can't ever get back into a frame of mind before some dramatic revelation was made or terrible truth found out. What's done can never be undone to. Except, it will have to be in this fanfic it seems. In the strange alternative reality that is this story, the events of Scorpia Rising will never come to be in anyway at all. Scorpia will never seek revenge on Alex, any new bad guys introduced in it will simply have never existed, no one who dies in it will die in this and Smither's last invention doesn't exist either, because it just messes with my mind too much to think about it DX So does pretending nothing in SR ever happened.**

Disclaimer- If I owned Alex Rider, Scorpia Rising would have been different.. For one thing- no wait, mustn't give anything more away than I already have, just in case. So yeah, I don't own the series sadly...

**(Warning for swearing, violence and semi nudity o.o)**

_And then the Heavens Open, but Not for You_

As expected, the first couple of days that Alex was there were not exactly the  
happiest of times, but he survived without anything particularly unexpected  
happening. The other soldiers either stared at him out of the corner of their  
eyes and glanced away when he looked at them, or glared openly at him. It was  
apparent to Alex that the latter were mostly minions of Osprey, whose strength  
and perchance for violence, along with some sort of strange charisma all but  
Alex seemed to see in him, had led to the other man having quite a lot of his  
fellow soldiers looking up to him as a sort of unofficial leader. Their  
respect for him didn't stop any one from the constant taunts and teasing that  
K-Unit had to endure thanks to their young new unit member, but they were all  
repetitive jokes that Alex had heard back at Brecon Beacons, so they didn't  
effect him all that much. They certainly seemed to ruffle Osprey's feathers  
though, who seemed to grow to hate Alex even more with every passing hour.

But so far his anger had merely manifested itself in snide remarks and the odd  
boot stuck out to try and trip Cub up, two things that he could cope with, and  
on the second account, easily avoid with an accuracy and grace that surprised  
even himself, though he knew the reason behind his newly found increased  
flexibility and decreased reaction time.

He had stuck to the silent promise he had made himself, and watched his  
consumption of the tablets very carefully. He took the liquid medicine three  
times a day without fail (saying when asked that it was to keep an old chest  
infection at bay) and carefully monitored himself constantly to make sure he  
took the tablets only when he felt he really needed them but before he became  
a danger to those around him, and not just before or during an exercise if he  
could help it (though some went on for several hours, forcing him to take a  
tablet or two anyway).

However, on his third day he came very close to revealing his secret when  
Osprey decided to act on Tiger's request for the first time.

Alex was walking alone around the corner of a building on the edge of the  
camp, looking down at the ground, deep in thought as he tried to work out how  
long it had been since he had taken his last Parabiteamol. Then suddenly  
something hit him so hard in the side of the head that he was knocked to the  
ground, hitting the wall of the building next to him on his way down. The  
immediate flair of pain to the side of his head was terrible, but an equally  
unexpected but smaller pain in his mouth was the one that caught his  
attention. Head throbbing and hands clamped tight over his lips, Alex glared  
up in confusion at the figure of Osprey standing above him.

"Bastard!" The oath was muffled behind his hands, but still audible to Osprey,  
who reacted by giving Alex a cursory kick in the side.

"Oh come on, I didn't even get you in the mouth!" He growled derisively at the  
teenager on the floor in front of him.

Alex scrambled to his feet and took a step back from the older man, out of  
range. Taking a risk, he moved his hands from his mouth long enough to spit  
blood down onto the ground beside him, then raised them again. Not because his  
mouth still hurt, but to hide the sharpened teeth that had suddenly burst  
through his gums when Osprey first attacked him.

There was no way he could explain them to him if he saw, and no way he could  
allow him to see in the first place.

Angry at himself for not seeing the blow coming, at MI6 for letting this  
happen, at the vampire who had bitten him, at the vampire blood flowing  
through his veins and at Osprey for having just punched him, Alex's eyes  
flashed briefly red.

Luckily Osprey didn't notice.

Keeping those eyes firmly on Osprey in case of further attack, Cub scrabbled  
blindly in a trouser pocket, pulling out two tablets and stuffed them in his  
mouth, being careful not to let Osprey glimpse his teeth. As he did so Osprey  
took a couple steps towards him while Alex took a couple of steps backwards.

"What the fuck is up with you, Cub?" He growled, confused and angered by his odd  
behaviour.

Incensed, Alex muttered back angrily, "What the 'fuck' is up with me? You're the  
one who just punched me!"

Ignoring him, the taller man peered malevolently down at him. "And what the  
hells up with your mouth?"

Spitting blood out again, Alex sneered, "What do you think?"

He pulled away as Osprey made to slam him against the nearby wall. He should  
have been able to avoid him, but the tablets were already taking effect,  
affecting his reaction time. With a grimace of pain Alex's back and head came  
into contact with hard brick.

Just as Alex was wondering if the world really might be conspiring to give him  
brain damage on top of everything else, he found Osprey glaring at him at  
uncomfortably close quarters.

"Look kid, I don't know why you're here, and I couldn't care less. But either  
you start playing by my rules or you get the fuck out of here, you get me?"

Alex glared right back at him, the red gone from his eyes but not the anger.  
It perforated every syllable as he hissed through teeth that were mercifully  
back to normal thanks to the drugs.

"Look, I don't want to be here, OK? But I can't leave. I don't know what your  
problem is, but just leave me alone and there wont be any trouble."

"Trouble?" Osprey laughed. "There's going to be trouble. Lots of trouble.  
Because you see kid, I really don't like you. And things I don't like tend to  
get hurt."

"That has to be the crappiest veiled threat I've ever heard."

Osprey wasn't sure what 'veiled threat' meant but knew he was being insulted.  
The urge to hurt Cub again flared through him and he moved one hand from where  
it was pinning him to the wall, drew it back and delivered a short, sharp  
punch with his fist to Alex's stomach.

An involuntary gasp of pain escaped Alex as the pain shot through his body and  
he crumpled to the ground as Osprey released him.

He stayed curled up on the floor, waiting for the pain to fade as he heard  
Osprey calmly walk away without another word.

"That bastard that fucking fucking fucking bastard! I'm gonna kill him. Gonna kill him. Gonna  
kill him." Alex chanted to himself angrily once Osprey was out of earshot. It  
hurt a lot where Osprey had punched him, though Alex didn't think there would  
be any permanent damage. It faded away slowly until Alex could stop swearing  
to distract himself from the pain. His head, stomach, side and back still  
aching he slowly dragged himself onto his hands and knees.

He just couldn't believe that bastard. Sure, he hadn't expected to end up his  
best friend or anything, but what sort of person beats up a fourteen year old  
boy just because he doesn't like him being there? Far too many people in this  
world, sadly. But still, this was going to make things much worse than he had  
imagined. He couldn't fight back. Must not fight back. He had wanted to, a  
normal reaction, but even after taking a couple of tablets, when Osprey had  
gotten close to him, he'd wanted to bite him so badly. He had been so close,  
so vulnerable, even though he never would have expected it. The taste of blood  
had already been in his mouth from where his fangs had burst through his  
gums...

Osprey was sure to hurt him again, what if Alex had no medicine with him the  
next time? What if he bit him? It would be the death of Alex. And perhaps  
Osprey, though he'd deserved it in Alex's personal opinion.

So. What about telling someone about it? His mind baulked at the idea. Alex  
had been brought up by Ian to solve his problems by himself rather then just  
tell an adult. But still, if it stopped Osprey... Alex considered his options.  
Another Unit member? But he didn't know any of them well enough to know how  
they would react. What if they didn't believe him? What if they were actually  
on Osprey's side? That would be disastrous. To go whining to one of Osprey's  
friends would make him look weak and childish. And they might beat him up too.  
Would Wolf do that? Would Wolf hurt him too? He had done in the past, when  
they first met at Brecon Beacons, though he hadn't actually beaten him up like  
Osprey had.

What would Eagle say? Nothing probably, he rarely did. What help would that  
be? Tiger? He would be on Osprey's side for sure. And anyway, even if one of  
them were on his side, it would just lead to the Unit becoming divided and  
dysfunctional, which wouldn't be good for any of them.

So who else? The Sergeant? He was the only one here who appeared to be in a  
position of power over Osprey. Hah. Not a chance. It was clear from how he  
acted towards Alex that he resented his presence here almost as much as Osprey  
did. He wouldn't help Alex. He would most likely pretend not to believe him or  
just order him to toughen up and deal with it himself.

Feeling angry, angry at the world and everything in it, Alex forced himself to  
stand up. His head swum and his vision blurred momentarily, making him feel as  
though he was going to throw up. "Ow." Alex muttered, putting a hand to the  
back of his head. He could feel a raised bump that was likely to hang around  
for quite a while. Now that he'd straightened up, his back ached a lot as  
well. "Bastard." Alex growled again.

Since he knew that by not taking any more medication he would get better  
quicker, Alex decided to not take any more until all the pain and most likely,  
bruising, had completely gone away. Screw the consequences.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

As Cub stood up and started to walk away, Tiger ducked to the side to avoid  
being spotted. Hiding behind one of the outer buildings his eyes gleamed and  
he smiled snarkily to himself. He had seen the entire thing. And the kid was  
right, Osprey really had been a bastard. Perfect. He just couldn't stop  
himself from grinning sadistically as he gleefully ran the events of the last  
few minutes back through his mind and thought about the possibilities for the  
future. Osprey had done just as he has asked, roughing him up a bit, making  
him feel targeted, alone, vulnerable. Tiger admired that fighting spirit he  
had seen in Cub though, answering back, not cowering away. That meant he  
wouldn't be too easy a conquest. and where would the fun be in that? But he  
hadn't attacked back aggressively either, which might make him easier to take  
advantage of in other situations.

He wondered why Cub had clutched at his mouth though, when he had clearly seen  
that Osprey hadn't punched him there. Maybe he was putting it on? The thought  
disappointed Tiger; he didn't want to be involved with a liar or a drama  
queen. But wait, he had spat out blood, hadn't he? That meant his mouth must  
have been bleeding in some way or other. Most likely he had bitten his tongue  
hard when he'd been hit.

The blue eyed man had been tempted to approach Alex then and there, to show  
that he cared, to ask him what was happened, to offer support and become a  
false ally for him against Osprey. But no, it was too soon. Cub would most  
likely have rejected him, making future approaches harder. But he knew he  
would have to act fairly soon, before the kid wimped out and asked to be sent  
home. He was only fourteen after all. But not just any fourteen year old,  
surely?

From what Tiger had seen of him over the last couple of days, he seemed much  
more solemn, independent and uncomplaining than any teenager should be able to  
manage in this sort of situation. SAS training was for the big boys, the  
special, the elite, but Cub seemed to be coping fairly well and had of yet not  
complained once of the strenuous exercises they had to do. And yet, he did not  
look disproportionably more muscular then he should be, he never acted cocky,  
he tended to avoid the other soldier's banter and antics warily and hadn't  
fought back against Osprey just now. That kid was weird, a walking enigma. But  
really quite a sexy and intriguing one, in Tiger's eyes. He would enjoy  
getting the boy to admit all his petty little secrets one by one. By the time  
Tiger was bored of him, there wouldn't be a fact about him he didn't know.  
Which would be very helpful for future blackmail.

The SAS soldier had a feeling he was going to have a lot of fun with poor  
little cub.

'You feel so lonely and ragged  
You lay here broken and naked  
My love is  
Just waiting  
To clothe you in crimson roses

I will be the one that's gonna find you  
I will be the one that's gonna guide you  
My love is  
A burning, consuming fire' *

'...and alls fair in love and war... no...alls fair in blood and gore'**

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

"I remembered black skies  
The lightning all around me  
I remembered each flash  
As time began to blur  
Like a startling sign  
That fate had finally found me  
And your voice was all I heard  
That I get what I deserve" ***

The water might have been lukewarm but Alex didn't care. A shower was a shower  
and he was just happy to be able to be getting clean again after getting muddy  
during training.

In order to escape from Osprey and to keep all his ugly scars hidden away from  
curious eyes and questions, Alex had disappeared off to grab a clean uniform  
from K-Units bunk and then ran off to have a shower the second they had been  
dismissed from the exercise. This had allowed him to get in first and nab one  
of the old singular showers at the back of the shower block. Most of the space  
was taken up by one big communal showering area, but round the back there were  
three broken down old individual showers, separated from each other by thin  
walls. The temperature of the water was even more temperamental back there,  
but it was the price you paid for privacy.

It was by complete coincidence that Alex shifted his gaze from the cracked  
roof tiles above down to the ground just as someone scooped up his clothes and  
ran off with them. He wouldn't have noticed this either, if it hadn't been for  
the corner of his towel poking through under the door. As someone went to grab  
it, Alex saw the movement, and without thinking leaned down and snatched it  
under the gap with lightning movement. He felt resistance as someone held onto  
it before quickly let go. Alex stared at the scruffy blue towel in his hands  
for a second before the situation resolved itself into something that made  
sense in his head.

He had had to leave his clothes piled neatly just outside the shower door, as  
there was no room inside, they would have got completely soaked in there..  
Someone had evidently noticed this and so decided it would be a funny idea to  
steal them. Yeah. Real hilarious.

Alex had managed to keep hold of the towel though. Time to go find out what  
had happened to the rest of his clothes.

Jaw clenched in anger, he quickly turned the shower off with a vicious action,  
not wanting the towel to get any wetter.

Quickly he wrapped it around himself, tucked under his arms to keep it in  
place and to cover up most of his scars.

The ones on his arms and shoulders he couldn't keep hidden though. Tiger had  
enquired earlier that day as to the various scratches and scars on his arms,  
which Alex had put down with a cheerful smile to an adventurous childhood.

But this was the first time his shoulders and the top of his back had been  
visible and Alex hoped he would be able to retrieve his clothes before anyone  
got too much of a look at the blotchy red marks that were the old burn scars  
from his final encounter with Desmond McCain,*** or the other scars now  
visible, such as the line on his left shoulder where a bullet had just caught  
him and the long gash on his back were the razor bladed boomerang of the real  
Feathered Serpents game had caught him.

But as he rounded the corner into the main showering area he came face to face  
with Osprey. Alex's eyes narrowed. No prizes for guessing who had orchestrated  
the prank, though he knew Osprey wouldn't have been the one to do it himself.  
Rather it would have been one of his cronies, several of which were now  
standing a little way behind their unofficial leader. Where as he was fully  
dressed and obviously hadn't had a shower yet, many of the other soldiers were  
just starting the process of stripping off their dirty uniforms.

Alex felt immediately uncomfortable as one by one they all turned to look at  
Alex standing there, dripping wet in just a towel.

"What are you doing, Cub?" Osprey asked, arms folded, smirking down at him.  
His tone of voice and stance made it evident to Alex that he knew exactly what  
he was doing and wasn't at all bothered that Alex knew it was his fault  
someone had nicked his clothes.

Anger flared up inside him, making Alex want to punch him right in his smug  
face. But he knew that that was exactly what Osprey wanted him to do, start a  
fight so that he could finish it.

It was just then that Alex noticed that one of the shower heads behind the  
other soldier, in the communal shower area, was turned on but no one was using  
it. With a sinking feeling, Alex took a step sideways so that he could see the  
floor below the shower. And just as expected his missing clothes immediately  
came into view, laying where they had been carelessly thrown, all drenched.

With a resigned sigh that hid his bubbling anger, Alex made to go retrieve his  
clothes.

But as he did so, Osprey stepped in his way, pushing him back lightly with a  
hand to his chest. Alex took a small step backwards away from the contact  
while giving Osprey a dirty look. Briefly their eyes locked, Alex's brown ones  
with their strange reddish brown flecks to Ospreys hazel coloured ones.

For all his showing off, it was the SAS soldier who broke the eye contact  
first. His eyes flicked away from Alex, before settling on the towel the  
teenager was wearing.

"So. Think your some kind of girl do you?"

Nonplussed at this seemingly random question, Alex replied, "No. Well, I  
wasn't last time I looked," as he gestured to his chest, clearly devoid of any  
femininity. He really didn't have a clue why Osprey had just asked him that,  
but distrusted the smile now back on the other man's face.

"Then why" He asked with the self satisfied smugness of a men revealing he had  
all four aces at the gambling table, "Are you wearing a towel round your  
chest?"

Mocking laughs and lewd comments followed his comment as others noticed what  
Osprey meant.  
Flicking damp hair out of his eyes with a quick, unruffled movement of his  
head, Alex shrugged as though bothered by the comments and replied lightly,  
"Warmer this way."

There. An answer for them. But not an honest one, nor one that Osprey's  
supporters or any of the other soldiers present would accept.

Alex had to admit it hadn't been his best lie, but still the taunts about how  
pathetic he was did nothing to raise his spirits.

Surreptitiously he glanced round, looking for any sort of ally. He spotted  
Wolf rolling his eyes and saying something to a solider he didn't know but  
sensed he would get little aid from that corner. Wolf might not hate him any  
more and clearly expect him to cope with little things like this.

Not that it felt little to Alex right at that moment. He hated Osprey, he  
really did, and thought for a second about just turning round and walking  
away. But though he couldn't retaliate, he couldn't stand the thought of  
actively backing off and giving in to his bullying.

In the eyes of those around him, there was no reason for him not to expose his  
chest. He was male after all, despite some of the mocking speculation he could  
hear. They wanted him to conform to their norms. Well, he could never do that  
completely, he was too much of an anomaly here, but they would want him to act  
as close to normal as possible.

Though he hid it as best as he could, Alex was angry. So angry, an emotion  
that seemed to rise up in him all too quickly these days.

"Why you so keen to see me topless?" He ended up asking of Osprey, his voice  
far steadier then it had right to be. Wolf whistles, sounds of appreciations  
at his pluckiness and more jeers followed.

Even Osprey laughed, though mirthlessly.

"Hah. I'm not bent you, little git. Just want to know what you're so keen to  
hide. Really sure your not a girl?

The anger that had been building up and up inside him lead to him finally  
snapping, not that anyone else present realised as he shrugged for a second  
time and untucked the towel from under his left arm and moved it. As his  
chest, stomach and back became exposed he concentrated on tucking in the towel  
firmly at his waist so he didn't have to watch the look of those around him as  
they noticed at first a couple of marks and then went on to spot all the  
blotchy red burns, old scratches, scars, and above all, the spidery white mark  
over his chest and the similar one under his left arm where the bullet had  
left his body.

As soldiers are not exactly known for their tact and subtly, several whistled  
at the sight or called out remarks such as, "Your boyfriend must be fucking  
mental!", "Yeah, Cub the masochist!", "Were you dropped on your head as well?"  
and "Got scars anywhere else we should know about?" However, there were less  
voices joining in this time.

Despite wanting to ignore everybody, Alex couldn't help his eyes flicking over  
to where Wolf was sitting, and then to where Tiger was standing.

Wolf looked shocked. That didn't surprise Alex, he was the only one who really  
had any idea about what sort of situations Alex tended to end up in against  
his will. He knew he was seeing the toll of a dangerous life had had on Cub  
already and wondered how many other tasks like the Point Blanc one Alex had  
ended up doing to get so many injuries. He wondered at the same time what the  
hell the government were doing to let him get in this state?

Though Tiger had heard the Point Blanc story as Wolf had told it, he had no  
idea of the extent to which Alex had risked his life in the past or why he had  
done so. His face appeared strangely blank to Alex, who in turn had no idea of  
the mental turmoil raging within Tiger's mind at that moment. He was in a sort  
of shock. How the hell had Cub ended up looking like that? Had he been in some  
sort of gang war? But he didn't seem like the type, too intelligent and  
unaggressive... And those burn marks. Had someone actively set fire to the  
kid? If not, what? What had happened to the kid for him to have...was that a  
bullet wound? Had Cub been shot in the chest? No...why on earth would Cub have  
been shot? It was impossible...right? Hadn't Wolf mentioned something about  
MI6? Could they have something to do with all this? Surely not, he was only  
15, what would they want with a 15year old?

He was more convinced then ever now that he would find out everything about  
Cub, especially why he had so many injuries... Rather than putting him off,  
seeing him like that made Tiger even more desperate then ever to posses Cub.  
Seeing all those scars made him want to trace his fingers across every  
imperfection, explore where else he might have scars... How fragile might his  
mind be, considering that he must have been through a hell of a lot of shit to  
have ended up so scarred at such a young age? He seemed pretty sound of mind,  
but surely he couldn't be? Well he certainly wouldn't be once Tiger was done  
fuck with his mind. Not that he would stop there... 

"So give me reason  
To prove me wrong  
To wash this memory clean  
Let the floods cross  
The distance in your eyes  
Across this new divide

In every loss in every lie  
In every truth that you deny  
And each regret and each goodbye  
Was a mistake too great to hide  
And your voice was all I heard  
That I get what I deserve"

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Finally, after what seemed like an age, Osprey had moved aside without a word  
and let Alex go turn the shower head off and pick up his sopping wet clothes.  
He was under no illusions as he squeezed the water out out of his top, that  
Osprey would be shocked into leaving him alone now. Why should an apparently  
rough background stop Osprey hating him? The smirk on his face hadn't faltered  
a bit the whole time and Alex knew he would be getting threats and pain from  
Osprey, not hugs and sympathy.

Wanting to escape from staring eyes and having got out the worst of the water  
so that his clothes weren't dripping wet any-more, Alex wondered round the  
corner, towards the exit, wondering what to do next. Walk to the bunks, bare  
footed in his towel to get some dry clothes? That seemed like the only option.  
But before he had chance to do so, a soldier who Alex recognised opened the  
door and entered. Alex racked his brains for a second, trying to remember his  
name. He was one of the soldiers from another unit Alex had helped out by  
getting a flag for his first evening there... Lion! That was his name, Lion.

He stopped in front of Alex and held something out to him, a dry pair of  
trousers, trainers and a top he recognised as his own. Not the uniform he  
needed, nor any underwear provided but Alex was immensely grateful. At least  
he would have something proper to wear while he made his way over to K-Units  
cabin at the other side of the camp.

When he went to thank Lion, he shrugged Alex's words off, saying that it was  
Eagle who had gone and gotten them for him out of his locker for him, and  
then, when he had bumped into Lion just outside the building, had asked him to  
pass them along.

Alex was still thankful though, Lion could have hidden them, dumped them on  
the floor or put them under a shower as well, but instead he had made sure  
Alex had got them. And Eagle had gone to all the trouble of fetching them for  
him? It seemed as though, just maybe there might be a couple of people here he  
could trust, even if it appeared Eagle might not want anyone to see he was  
willing to help Cub.

***Lyrics from Whispers in the Dark by Skillet  
**I usually think It's silly to to quote yourself, but it was something that  
randomly occurred to me and I felt it fitted XD  
***Reading fanfics I often noticed that when Alec's scars were mentioned, many  
people seemed to forget about the burns he suffered during Crocodile Tears, so  
I promised myself I would remind people about them, and then AH went and  
mentioned them in SR. I was like, 'How dare you! You stole that idea from me.  
Oh...wait...' XD  
***Lyrics from Linkin Park's New Divide.**

**Phew. Finally finished that chapter. Once again I'm sorry it took me so long to finish it, I hope it was worth it. As you can see, certain things have been set in motion and the plot should quite soon reach It's climax and a...unusual knew revelation. I mentioned ages ago (though I don't expect any one to remember) that I had a plan written up that was over 1K words long. Well a lot of stuff has changed since then, and even gained an extra, short story arc. The SAS arc is not quite halfway done, but I'm going to have to speed it up a bit and miss out things I planned so I can get onto the arc after (which will contain lots more information on Alex's vamparic state, and then the last mini arc which will only be., at most, two chapters long.  
The reason I've got to speed everything up is that I've been writing this for quite a bit over a year now, but I'm not even half way through yet and I've really got until the end of the next summer holiday to finish it, in my mind. Why? Because after then, unless I don't get accepted anywhere (that shouldn't happen, I hope), I will be going off to University to do, will, creative writing, actually XD. Which will mean I will need to spend all my time writing 'proper' stories, not fanfiction, I'm afraid.**

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed reading this chapter, have questions you want to ask or anything like that, please comment! Comments really are appreciated (well, unless if they are flames or just say 'plz update soon' :P)

Oh, and of course, thanks as ever to WiththeWhatNow for her amazing patients and still being happy to beta read my chapters after all this time and procrastination XD

**(p.s, does any one get the triple meaning behind the chapter title? No? don't worry about it XD)**


	14. Closing in on the Prey

**Yeah, so, It's been what, three months since I last updated? Pathetic I know, but ive been busy. So so busy and this chapter has progressed so slowly due to that...I'm afraid I've cut it short just so I could get an update out before I go away to New York. It's only for a few days, but I'm seriously busy again straight after with little or no time for writing fanfiction, so I just had to update.**

**I apologies a thousand times for how short and open ended this chapter is. I promise everything will kick off next chapter, which WILL be posted up within three months. I PROMISE I PROMISE I PROMISE.**

**Unfortunately, my internet blocking FF is amazingly unhelpful and makes it actually impossible to update (if you see this It's most likely because WiththeWhatNow has been kind enough to access my account and post this up). Also, replying to peoples comments is harder...might be able to in school I guess, since that isn't banned, unlike uploading stuff... I know there are a couple of people who last commented that I really want to reply to... will try!**

**Disclaimer: yep, still not mine.**

**Recap: They've all seen his scars. Bugger.**

_Closing in on the Prey_

As expected, life didn't become easier for Alex after the little showering incident. The other soldiers had become even more confused and curious about him, something Osprey didn't seem to approve of. He vented his annoyance by lashing out at Alex whenever he could, be it roughly bumping into him as he passed, snatch things out of his hands or, like on one occasion, punch him in the face when he reached the top of the climbing wall in the assault course.

He'd seen it coming (though no one else saw what happened) and avoided the worst of the blow. Instead of being sent crashing to the ground below with a broken nose, the blow caught him on his jaw, resulting in a bruise that he explained away easily to the others as simply being a result of his own clumsiness. To the other soldiers, it seemed like all of a sudden he had become very clumsy, when in fact the opposite was true. Despite all the tablets he was taking, he was still more light footed, flexible and had much faster reaction time than he had as a human, though the difference wasn't big enough for anyone but Alex to really notice it. Hopefully.

Whereas Osprey had become more vicious towards him, Wolf had suddenly grown almost concerned for him, something Alex found very hard to comprehend. Was this really the same guy who had forced him to have an unpleasant encounter with a stun grenade back at Brecon Beacons who had now tried delicately to talk to Alex about his past injuries? Of course, Alex had had to fob him off about that, being purposefully vague and changing the subject as quickly as possible. He really didn't want to go discussing his past missions with anyone, even Wolf who already knew a small part of the tale and would probably be able to understand what he had gone through more than most other people.

Of course, there was one person who understood exactly what he was going through currently with Osprey; Tiger. Three days after the shower incident, while Alex was sitting alone on his bunk during a bit of free time, trying to work out the best place to put the I-pod Smithers had sent him so that the sun shining through the window above him would catch its solar panels full on, Tiger appeared in the door of the cabin.

Legs crossed underneath him, concentrating on angling the solar panels just right, Alex paid little attention to him until he walked over to Alex's bunk, stuffed away at the back of the cabin, and asked if he could sit down.

Surprised and wary about the threat of approaching questions he didn't want to answer, Alex nodded tightly without speaking and snatched the I-pod back off the bed before Tiger could manage to sit on it.

"Cub." he started with great gravity. Alex resisted rolling his eyes, sure he was about to get a lecture on personal safety or questions about his scars.

Instead he fixed Alex with a piercing look with his bright blue eyes and asked, "Has Osprey been, ah, hurting you?"

Oh. What had Tiger seen?

Before Alex could answer (not that he had any idea of what to say), Tiger spoke again with a sigh.

"Look, Cub, there's no point trying to tell me that nothings going on. I know he's been picking on you, I've seen how he acts towards you."

Feeling uncomfortable, Alex opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Tiger ploughed on, a look of reassuring sympathy on his face.

"I know what its like to have someone who acts like a right bastard to you even though you never did anything to him. It's not, uh, exactly fun," at this he glanced away from Alex, as though lost in memory before shaking his head with a rueful smile that faded back to seriousness as he spoke again. "I know you don't want to go making a big fuss about it, but you can tell me anything. Anything, you hear me?"

Though the soldier obviously meant well, Alex really just wanted to get away from him now, he didn't like the way Tiger was leaning towards him like that, invading Alex's personal space with that fervent, compelling look in his eyes, as though he could get Alex to pour out his whole life story to him just with the power of his gaze.

So he just nodded vaguely and said "Right."

"Do you want me to talk to Osprey about it?"

"No!" Alex blurted out immediately in horror, sitting up straight.

"Sorry, you're right, that's a stupid idea," he placed a reassuring hand on the teenagers shoulder. "Someone like him wouldn't be bothered would they? I bet he wouldn't leave you alone, even if anyone else knew...does any body else know?"

Alex shook his head, using the movement as an excuse to lean back so that Tiger was forced to let go of his shoulder. "No, I didn't tell anyone, I mean, it's nothing serious, everyone has the right to get on, or not, with whoever they like."

Even Alex wasn't entirely sure where he was going with this, but he wanted to assure Tiger that things weren't as bad as he thought they were. He shrugged vaguely. "It doesn't matter really, I don't know what his problem is, but its not my problem - it's his." Even to his own ears the words sounded pretty lame.

"Of course, of course not." Tiger replied soothingly as though trying to calm a skittish horse. Instead it annoyed Alex; he wasn't a five year old for gods' sake! But Tiger was just trying to help, and it was kind of reassuring to know that there was someone looking out for him here, even if he wasn't one to go running to others with problems.

But he mustn't let Tiger get too close, having no friends here was a good thing, it meant having less people who thought it was their right to pry into subjects he really didn't want to discuss. Or ones he couldn't. He mustn't let any one discover what he was. He didn't want to die.

All the same, as Tiger left him with a final smile and friendly pat on the back, Alex couldn't help feeling a little bit reassured that he was still able to, impossibly, make knew friends, or at least allies, now that he...had changed. He had feared he might have lost his heart by now, or at least his sanity.

It was unfortunate that reassurance wouldn't last long. Only a day in fact. Tiger was an impatient sort of person. And Alex, almost as vulnerable as he was deadly...

_*"Weep for yourself, my man  
You'll never be what is in your heart  
Weep little lion man  
You're not as brave as you were at the start  
Rate yourself and rape yourself  
Take all the courage you have left  
Wasted on fixing all the problems  
That you made in your own head_

But it was not your fault but mine  
And it was your heart on the line  
I really fucked it up this time  
Didn't I, my dear?

Tremble for yourself, my man  
You know that you have seen this all before  
Tremble little lion man  
You'll never settle any of your score  
Your grace is wasted in your face  
Your boldness stands alone among the wreck  
Learn from your mother  
Or else spend your days biting your own neck"  


***Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons. I adore this song and find it quite appropriate to go here...**

**As I said, pathetically short and pointless, but better then nothing for another couple of months, right? At least you know I'm still alive! Or at least, I hope I am when you read this...**


	15. Hunter's Kiss

**Hjdsaofolpdfddf... Had so little time to write. Been so busy! Weekends especially, and weekdays, and yeah, that's all days, isn't it? So I've gone and let you all down on my promise to upload something within the next three months... I'm soooo sorry about that, exams murdered me, and so did life. By the way, I did crap in those exams. :(**

**But, at last, here is THE CHAPTER. The one that's been planned for well over a year now. The one that I've finally reached. The really important one. The one that started off in my mind as a retort to all the fanfics in which Alex randomly seems to go gay half way through the story despite no hint of that built up in prior chapters. The one that had to be written because I had set it up that way. The one that I still managed to find quite far out of my comfort zone to write. The one you are probably going to hate me for... You have been warned. :P**

**(But look on the bright side, it's probably the second longest chapter I've written so far in OBTS, over double the length of most chapters, that's got to count for something, right? XD)**

**Disclaimer- I don't own AR or anything to do with it/him. I just own a nasty bully and a hansom super-pervert. Yay, go me!**

**Recap- Relieved to have apparently gained a new ally in his messed up life, Alex is about to get a bit of a shock...**

_Hunter's Kiss_

The evening's weather was beautiful, just a little too warm but with a light, tickling breeze that stopped Alex feeling too hot as he lay on his back, watching fluffy white clouds slide along in the big blue sky. His arms stretched up and with hands under his head, he lay peacefully in the long grass listening to music on his I-pod.

The other members of his unit were at some sort of weapons tutorial that Alex had been barred from going to. To start with he had felt annoyed at the way yet more differences to the others were being forced upon him. Wasn't it enough, how separate he was made to be from them already? No need to remind them once again that he didn't belong here.

But then it had occurred to him, that since he had been given no orders as of what to do instead, he could do as he pleased. So, ignoring Osprey's insults about being too pathetic to be even allowed to hold so much as a riffle, he had headed back to their cabin. But not wanting to be stuck in there on one of the few warm days England actually had, he snatched up his I-pod, set it to shuffle and had gone for a wonder through the woods that surrounded the camp while listening to music. After about half an hour he ended up looping back to a spot he had come across several days ago and had snuck off to whenever he got the chance and wanted to be alone, which wasn't often on the first account, but near consistently on the second.

It was a small clearing filled with long grass and the odd thistle. On three sides it was surrounded by trees, but on the fourth it was blocked by a sheer cliff. Below it was a large lake and if Alex looked behind himself he could see where the assault course zip-wire crossed across its great expanse.

Alex had had very little time to himself since the... incident, and he found that being completely on his own for once was a huge relief. No more having to pretend to be something he was not, or tip-toe around others in case something happened that lead to his true nature being revealed. Ah. That reminded him - how long since he had last taken a tablet? A while. Though he wasn't yet feeling the urge to go chasing off after little fluffy bunny rabbits to devour, he decided to take a couple now anyway, as the preliminary wave of weakness they were likely to leave him with would have passed fully before it was time to do another drill or exercise.

After another ten minutes, Alex sighed, knowing he had best start heading back soon. It wasn't that it was getting too dark or too cool yet; British summer evenings were long and light. However, he was pretty sure the weapon tutorial was scheduled to last two hours, and it would be a really bad idea for him to be missing if the Sergeant called for them all to go on another evening exercise.

Alex was reluctant to move just yet though, he still had time, and who knew when he would next get chance to relax again?

He was enjoying life more so now then he had done for weeks. Sure, he had many things to worry about, and his back and shoulders ached almost contently these days, but there was nothing he could do having been strapped down on his back while he underwent... those changes, or the heavy backpacks he had been forced to carry on so many of their exercises.

So he just ignored those things, and tried to look on the positive side. Like that despite all he had been through, he could still lay back and enjoy the sun without, say, being burned to a crisp or crumbling to a pile of ash. Back when he had been confined and tests ran on him, they had used various UV rays and high power lamps on patches of his skin and came to the conclusion that, unlike in mythology, sunlight had no negative effects on him at all. In fact, since coming to the Lake District, he had managed to get distinct tan lines on his arms and neck from wearing the same sort of clothes again and again while spending a lot of time outside in the sun.

It was then that a shadow fell across Alex. A feeling of sudden shock shot through the teenage spy. For a second his mind jumped to the worst conclusions. But, no, that monster who had hurt him couldn't possibly know where to find him. And if it was Scorpia or any of his other enemies, surely he would be dead already?

Trying not to show his fear, he calmly sat up and looked around, his I-pod slipping off his chest and one of the ear-buds falling out of place.

Upon seeing Tiger standing over him, smiling lightly, Alex allowed all the fear and tension in his body to drain away. It was replaced by mild irritation. He had hoped to have this time to himself, and had thought that he was fairly unlikely to be found here.

As Tiger sat down happily next to Alex, as though without a care in the world, Alex said, "I thought the weapons tutorial was going to last longer then that."

"So did we." he replied. "Our tutor had to go answer some important call from the MoD or something though, and the Sergeant's down in the town so it looks as though we've got ourselves a bit of free time." His words were happy and honest sounding, but Alex felt uncomfortable under his stare. What was it with Tiger and the way he always looked at him so strangely? It made him feel paranoid, sure that Tiger had somehow managed to discover his secret and was now trying to scare him into admitting the truth to him. It was a predatory, hungry look that made it hard for Alex to work out what the older man might be thinking.

"How did you find me?" He asked next. Tiger laughed. "I've seen you disappear off in this direction before, and since I didn't have anything better to do, I decided to follow you to this...hmm, would you call it a cliff top? To see if I could spot you. Was pretty surprised to find you though. Lucky coincidence, ay?" Before Alex got so much as a chance to mutter an agreement that would not have been exactly heartfelt, Tiger leaned over, crossing the gap between them and picked up the I-pod that had fallen by Alex's hand. His fingers brushed Alex's as he did so, making him pull it away from the older man just slightly, without thinking. As Tiger lifted the I-pod up, the other ear piece was jerked away from Alex.

"Sorry" Tiger muttered, handing it back to him and putting the other one in his own ear. Alex put his back in too, taking the chance to shift a little away from Tiger, who seemed to have no real concept of personal space. He wasn't able to get very far away, due to the how short the ear phones were.

Tiger listened silently long enough to hear a few lines of the song.

"_Yo, we gonna go ghost town,  
This motown,  
With yo sound  
You're in the place  
You gonna bite the dust  
Can't fight with us  
With yo sound  
You kill the INC.*"_

Then he laughed. "Wait! I recognise this. Its that weird feel good song from a few years back, right?"

"Yeah" Alex replied, pulling the bud from his ear and motioning for Tiger to pass him back the I-pod. Tiger stopped listening reluctantly and wrapped the length of the earphone round the I-pod as he said, "You know, I haven't heard that song for ages. No one seems to play it any more. Except you."

Alex shrugged and held out his hand for the I-pod. "I haven't sorted through my music for ages. There's loads of crap on there I never listen to, but I had it of shuffle." He said, in way of explaining why the song had been playing.

Tiger didn't hand back Alex's I-pod as he had hoped, but seemed to weigh it in his hand, looking at the back as he did so. "Strange design, this" He commented. Alex shrugged again as he quickly and calmly thought of a lie. "Yeah, a guy I know is great with tech stuff, its one he was messing around with and gave to me when the he couldn't get the sun panels on the back to work as well as he would like." Lies where always best when they had an echo of truth within them. However, in order to avoid any further questions on the matter, Alex rolled his eyes and said, "Come on Tiger, give it back before you drop it or something."

"Drop it, ay?" He replied, a suddenly cheeky look appearing on his face. Immediately he held it above Alex's head and made motions as though he was going to drop it. Instinctively, Alex made a grab for it, but Tiger stood up, holding it out of his reach and chuckled. "Your gonna have to grow a bit, Cub, before you can take me on!"

"I'm not trying to take you on, I'm trying to get my I-pod back. Obviously. What's an SAS soldier doing, acting like a kid?" He replied, standing up as well, eyes narrowed in annoyance.

"Oh, I'm the kid, am I?" There was amusement in his voice, but not cruelty, like he was just teasing a younger brother. "Look at you, how old are you, twelve?"

"Fifteen." Alex replied with a growl as he suddenly jumped up and managed to grab his possession back off of an unexpecting Tiger.

Tiger made a grab for it and managed to get hold of Alex's arm as he landed back on the ground. The older man held him like that for a couple of seconds and when it became obvious that Tiger wasn't about to let him go without a fight, Alex decided do something about it. He relaxed his hand, though not enough to drop his I-pod and yanked his arm backwards, so that it skimmed past his own head. It was a simple self defence technique Ian had taught him when he was younger, but an effective one as it took advantage of the point at which Tiger's grip was weakest. He hadn't been holding on very tight anyway, allowing Alex to escape with little effort.

Once again, Tiger laughed. "OK, OK, you win."

Alex wanted to come back with some sort of witty remark, but found himself suddenly not feeling very well. It was a feeling he had had a couple of times before when he had been hurt during combat training. But he wasn't hurt now, he wasn't being threatened, so why was he feeling so uneasy and alert? He suddenly felt a pain in his gums, something that caused a wave of panic to roll through him.

He had been really quite close to Tiger for a second or two, making contact with him in fact, just enough for that other side of him to begin to instinctively awaken in his defence. No, there was more to it than just that. In order to defend him, yes, but his vampiric side had awoken due to blood lust too.

Tiger was so unaware of the danger, and so vulnerable here by himself, alone with Alex...

He quickly turned away from the SAS soldier, and as he put his I-pod away in the light backpack he had brought out with him, Alex quickly popped a couple of tablets out of their casing and downed them both with a swig of unpleasantly sun warmed water.

"You OK Cub?" Tiger asked in a concerned voice from his right. Alex nodded, eyes closed until he was able to compose himself enough to explain the pained look on his face. "Yeah. Just mistimed swallowing tablets, you know?"

"Yeah, I hate doing that." He agreed. "Why do you need to take them anyway? You always seem to be taking some sort of drugs."

Not wanting to bother with a proper lie, Alex forced a laugh and told him, "Ah, I'm just a drug addict you see." It amused him to use the same thing many of his classmates did to explain all his absences from school.

"Really now?" Tiger leant down and stole his I-pod back out of the bag. "Guess that means you must have mugged some poor bloke and stolen this to pay for drugs then?" Seriously, what did he think he was playing at?

"Urgh. Not again. Grow up, Tiger!"

Tiger jumped up and took several steps back, holding the gadget out mockingly. With a sigh Alex decided to humour him, at least a little. He stood up reluctantly, clearly showing the soldier that he thought he was being immature and hardly worth his time. Tiger's playful attitude was almost as infectious as it was annoying though, and Alex began to relax a little as he stalked Tiger, who was walking backwards away from him, around the clearing.

He allowed Alex to get close enough to make a swipe at the I-Pod, but though he was fast, Tiger managed to pull it out of his reach.

"Oh come on Tiger, you're in the SAS, not Primary School you know."

"Don't dis Primary School, best years of my life!"

Alex laughed and made another lunge for his possession, but this time got nowhere near it. Tiger managed to grab his arm but let go straight away. Alex tried again, his aim even further off the mark this time and the older man grinned as he managed to catch Alex once again.

"What's wrong, Cub? Giving up? If you do, I get to keep this."

"N-nothing. And you are not keeping that!" But as much as he was trying to hide it, there was something wrong. He was feeling the usual sudden lapse in energy and strength that he always did just after taking tablets, but this time it was worse than usual.

Trying to pretend he was fine, he made several more attempts to get back his I-Pod, each more lacklustre than the last. Tiger didn't seem to notice though, he was having too much fun crowing over his success at how easily he could catch Alex's arm in his free hand.

Annoyed at how bad he was feeling, and how much of a fool he felt at being beaten so easily, Alex made one last grab for the I-Pod. Tiger caught his hand with such enthusiasm that he jerked Alex off his feet for a second, before he let go. Unbalanced, Alex's legs gave out from under him and he fell back on to the grass. Despite himself, he laughed slightly at how ridiculous the situation was. Alex Rider, teenage spy and vampire, had managed to fall back onto his arse. Not something he would have exactly called an impressive achievement.

It scared him though how bad he was feeling right now. The explanation suddenly occurred to him. Oh. He had been warned not to take, what was it? More then three or four in an hour? And how many had he taken in less than half an hour? Four. No wonder he felt as weak and pathetic as a new born lamb. He really needed to get Tiger to go away so he could spend a little more time alone, and hopefully recover from the side effects of his medication. But what if there were more serious side effects that just weakness? Could this overdose perhaps kill him? No, it couldn't possibly. At least, he hoped it couldn't. Trying to ignore such ominous thoughts, Alex made to stand up but stopped in surprise when Tiger suddenly crouched down over him on all fours, his face near Alex's and all of his prior playfulness replaced by something... different. Something dangerous.

More than a little confused at this sudden turn of events, the only noise the teenager managed to make was, "Uh..." Before he shuffled back on his elbows, away from the soldier. Tiger didn't let him back away and stand up though, he moved forward on his hands and knees, acting almost like a big cat stalking its prey. "Uhhh, Tiger?" Alex said nervously. He was starting to get more than a little freaked out by how close the other man was to him, and by the predatory look in his eyes.

Just knowing that he wanted to get as much distance between the two of them as he could, Alex kept on backing away until he banged his head into the trunk of a large tree on the edge of the clearing. The shade of the tree seemed to eclipse all warmth and light from the sunny evening.

There was no chance to keep on going backwards now. He would either have to figure out what sort of game Tiger thought he was playing, or escape out in one of the directions left to him. But how? Tiger was so close now, Alex could have bitten him. The thought shot through him like lightning, making him shudder involuntary. Alex could swear he could hear his own heart thumping against his ribs and his blood pulsing through his veins. But he was equally sure he could hear Tiger's as well. Or maybe he just thought that because he could hear Tiger's slightly heavier than normal breathing so clearly.

Feeling this whole freaky situation was just getting out of hand now, Alex laughed nervously, "Seriously Tiger, you're really creeping me out now." Once again, he didn't reply, but instead smiled a self-satisfied grin, and still his lustful eyes bore into Alex's, the pupils so dilated that his eyes appeared almost black rather than their natural bright blue.

"_Here's the sad story, about a deer, and a man!  
A romantic scene, from a lullaby,  
In the clearing green, where his eyes met mine.**"_

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

He couldn't help it. Couldn't help making his move. It was too late to stop and pretend nothing had happened. He didn't want to stop anyway. He wanted the boy. Wanted that young, handsome, innocent human being. He couldn't take his eyes off of Cub's. They were so unusual in their colouring, more so now then he had ever noticed before. And they were so wide and full of fear and confusion. Where were his smart remarks and fighting spirit now? Could it be that, maybe, just maybe, he wasn't quite as a afraid as he made out? His eyes might seem to be darting all around for an escape route, but he wasn't attacking Tiger. He wasn't fighting back. Could that mean that maybe he didn't want to fight him off? Maybe his breathing wasn't faster than normal due to fear, maybe it was due to anticipation... Perhaps he would really welcome the attention... That would certainly make things easier for Tiger, but really, a lot less fun. He preferred a struggle, preferred it to be more of a victory, a struggle, a conquest of another. Now that was what really got his pulse racing...

"_I have never, felt like this before.  
Felt my body sinking, to the grassy floor.  
No I have never, known a love like this,  
Felt the flaming arrows, of the hunter's kiss.  
My life is not mine, like a dog or a wife.  
He has taken his time, he has taken my life"_

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Dammit dammit dammit! Why did he have to be feeling so weak now, of all times? Why had he had to of just taken those two extra tablets? Why? He knew why, though, to stop himself biting Tiger, not that the bastard deserved such consideration from Alex.

He was still trying to convince himself that Tiger was just messing with him, but he knew that there was really no way of getting round the fact that the soldier was invading his personal space far too much, had him effectively pinned against a tree and was staring at him with the most lustful, lecherous look Alex had ever seen in his life.

The older man certainly did not have the boys best interests at heart at the moment.

He was trying to make sense of the situation, but it just seemed so strange and unbelievable even to someone who had been through as much as Alex had, that he was struggling to make sense of what was going on, and what to do.

Could it be that maybe Alex was just misreading the situation? Maybe...maybe that was a look of blood lust in his eyes. Maybe he knew that Alex wasn't human, and wasn't human himself! That would certainly explain the way he had been acting towards him since they first met. ...Maybe he knew the creature who had bitten Alex in the first place and was here to finish him off!

Still in shock, but his mind racing, Alex tried to speak, tried to demand the soldier explain to him what the hell was actually going on, and to tell him to let him go or else... Or else what? He was in no state to fight back.

He never got a chance to speak though. Before he could say a word, Tiger grabbed hold of the top half of both his arms, and with a grip like iron, crushed him back against the tree, twisting his arm further back around the tree trunk. He shifted his weight forward so the majority of his bulk was keeping Alex pinned against the tree and drew his heavy booted feet over Alex's knees in order to immobilise him further. The teenager panicked, trying his best to get away, but the side effects of his medication still very much had a hold on him, meaning his attempts were weak and futile.

They were also the distracting response that Tiger had clearly hoped for. Alex's struggles ended abruptly as he froze with shock at Tiger roughly pressed his lips against Alex's own.

Alex wanted to shout and swear, push Tiger away and punch him, make the soldier sorry for ever doing... this._ Oh... fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This cannot be happening! _His mind could barely process what an unexpected, and frankly disturbing, turn of events had taken. It couldn't be true. Another man couldn't possibly be enthusiastically crushing their lips to his. It was just insane.

Alex had nothing against people being homosexual, he knew two or three guys from school who were and would never have dreamt of being cruel to them because of their sexuality. However, another man forcibly holding him against his will and biting at his bottom lip, was not something Alex was remotely in favour of.

Wide eyed and extremely freaked out, Alex managed to break off the contact and twisted as best as he could away from the soldier, trying to avoid it happening again. Glaring at Tiger from the corner of his eye, he found himself making eye contact with his attacker. For a moment or two, they stayed fixed like that, staring at each other, their breath ragged and hearts pounding, but for very different reasons from one another.

Then Alex spat to the side, hating the idea the idea that Tiger's saliva might have gotten into his mouth. It was a thought bad enough to make him want to retch.

"What. The Fuck. What the fuck do you think you are playing at. Get off me! I don't want you anywhere near me, you fucking bastard!" He wasn't the type to swear all that often really, but in this case at least, his feelings of disgust and horror were enough to make him want to spit at Tiger every curse word he knew in the English language, plus the ones he knew from other languages.

The soldier didn't flinch away at all, or make any attempt to let him go in reaction to the venom in the teenager's voice. The way he saw it, it was just a bluff really, just the boy's shock showing through. He wanted this really. Oh yes, they always did. Tiger knew how to show them a good time, even if they didn't realise a good time was what they were looking for. Besides, he knew Cub was a pretty strong kid, but his attempts to escape were feeble at best. He must want it really, if he wasn't struggling all that much... he wished he would though. Wished that the boy would use all his strength to try and push him away, to punch him, to bite him, to pull at his hair...yeah, that would feel really good...

"Fucking bastard?" He finally repeated after a long pause. There was a strange, deranged look in his eyes, and a creepy smile spreading lazily across his face. "If you want me to be..." He dug his nails viciously into Alex's arms, trying to cause him pain, and using the grip, pulled him away from the tree trunk momentarily, before smacking him him back into the hard bark.

Alex gasped as pain shot through his back and head, but a second later, Tiger had his lips pressed against his again, using the whole of his upper body to hold the younger man still.

The teenager's mind was racing as he tried to think of any bit of self defence he had been taught over the years which would allow him to escape from this situation, as weak as he was. But the techniques that kept occurring to him were simply no use. Jab him in the wind pipe? That didn't need a lot of strength, just couple of fingers and a good aim... No, he wasn't able to get his arms free. Use that foot, knee and hip twisting technique he had once been taught, in order to use Tiger's own bulk against him and throw him off? But his legs were trapped too, and he needed more strength than that. Go for the eyes? No, he needed his arms free for that as well. Upper-cut to the stomach? Same problem. Not even the final fail safe attack of a good kick, punch, or elbow to the groin was any good to him here.

It was terrifying. All those years of training, but just a couple of tablets too many had rendered all that he knew, useless.

A shudder went through him as Tiger let go of his right arm and put a hand on his waist. He made as to try and pull at his trousers, but got distracted by the feel of taut, overly smooth skin of an old burn mark on his waist. Remembering those unexpected scars on Cub's torso, Tiger ran his hand up under his top, trying to trace the scars with his finger tips. He couldn't find many though, as a lot were too small to have left any raised skin, and his movements were too ardent, and desperate to notice any of the subtler variations.

However, he did manage to find the bullet wound, and his lips pulled into a smug smile against the boy's mouth as he thought about what he could do to pursued Cub to reveal to him how he had managed to receive such an unusual injury for a teenager. Though of course Cub, his Cub, now, was oh so unusual himself. _I will have your body, Cub, and I'll have your dark secrets, kid, just you wait and see_, he thought triumphantly, pulling his hand from under Cub's top, and using it to pull the boy's hand away from his throat and back, immobilised, against the tree.

And it was then that something happened that almost made Alex loose it all together. A sharp, stabbing pain began to build up in his gums.

_No, no, no, no, no! Fuck. No! This is impossible. This isn't allowed to happen, no!_

The very medicine that had stolen all this strength was supposed to keep that side of him at bay. The horrible, twisting note of tension in his stomach grew worse and worse, his mind in even more of a panic as dark, slinking thoughts that weren't his own, began to sneak in.

Hoping that this would at least signal the return of his usual strength, Alex doubled his attempts to escape from Tiger. But though he didn't feel quite as weak as before, he was by no means up to full strength. It appeared that perhaps his medicine wasn't quite as up to the task as he had been lead to believe... what a time to finally find that out.

His head and back still ached from being bashed into the tree, his arms were hurting beneath Tiger's iron grip and his mouth felt as though blades were slowly ripping through it. Which, in a sense, they were.

If he had been afraid before, that fear had doubled. Not only was he at the mercy of a sexual predator, but there was no doubt at all in his mind, that his secret was about to become known. With a human being so close...so close as to be kissing him with as much enthusiasm as someone with an unresponsive partner could possibly muster, and with his medication having seemingly failed him at a critical moment, Alex simply didn't know what to do.

He had to get out of there. Somehow. Anyhow. It didn't matter, he just had to get away before the urge simply became too strong and he sunk his teeth into Tiger.

He kept trying to pull away, managing to escape the soldier's lips for a second or two, long enough to manage to say "Just. Fuck off! Get off, now!" or, "Stop it. Tiger, please!" before Tiger was biting at him again or roughly crushing his face to the teenager's. It was as though Tiger couldn't hear him at all, as though he had no idea what he was doing was wrong.

But he had to, had to know that Alex wasn't willing to do this with him, had to hear the threats and the imploring for him to stop. Alex wasn't someone to beg, but right at that moment, he would have done if he had thought Tiger would have allowed him to escape.

It was perfectly clear now that there were three things that were very likely to happen before this ordeal was over. The first was that it appeared Alex would most likely bite Tiger, in which case, he might as well forfeit his life right then, if someone like this man got hold of his secret, he was doomed...unless he killed Tiger, which would get rid of a couple of problems, but create a hell of a lot more.

The second thing that seemed sickeningly likely was rape. The amount of cruelty, lust, and indifference to Alex's distress that the older man was showing towards him, combined with the mounting sexual aggression in him, made rape seem inevitable if the teenager was unable to do anything to stop him.

The third was both combined, them both giving into their lust and both suffering because the other couldn't control themselves.

Alex was rather keen to avoid all the above, but unfortunately, that wasn't to be.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Starting to get a little tired now, but desperate to get as far as he could before Cub escaped him, or worse, they were discovered, Tiger started to try and undo the fastening on the boy's trousers. But he was distracted from that pursuit when he felt the boy's tightly clenched jaw, loosen. Eagerly he ran his tongue between Cub's teeth, before suddenly pulling back with a startled yelp as pain shot through his invading tongue. Shit! Cub had bitten him! Sure, he liked it rough but, fuck, that really hurt! He could actually taste blood in his mouth!

He glared down at Cub, letting go of the trouser zip he had just managed to undo, and grabbing him by the arms again. He meant to hurt him, to cause him pain in return for the pain he was now feeling from his bitten and bloody tongue. But he didn't. He couldn't. All he could do was stare in surprise at Cub's eyes. _What the Fuck...? _His eyes! What the fuck was up with the kid's eyes? They weren't like that before! It wasn't natural. Wasn't right. No one's eyes could go suddenly black with red flecks like that, it was freakish. Was this why he had to take all that stupid medication, for some creepy eye disease?

And what was with that weird look Cub was giving him? What was the kid's problem? He saw his lips pull back into a smile. No, not a smile, a snarl. And he saw, clearly in the evening light, that Cub's teeth were...strange. Very strange.

Cub had a fist full of his tee-shirt grasped tightly in his fist. The grip got even tighter, and without a word, Cub pulled himself up against Tiger, as though trying to give him a friendly hug. But there was nothing friendly about the stab of pain he suddenly felt at the side of his neck. Before he had time to react, more pain blossomed, worse than the first time. He yelped, confused and actually quite scared now. He tried to push the teenager away from him, but wasn't able.

A second later he felt no need to though. What had been the problem? He had been in pain just now, hadn't he? Really bad pain. But it was gone now. How he just felt strangely light headed. Something weird was happening now, something that shouldn't be. But what ever it was, it didn't actually hurt any-more. In fact, it kind of felt good...

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Alex hadn't been able to help it, had felt his jaw relax of it's own accord, even as he felt his teeth sharpen and fangs finally slide through his gums. He had tried to fight it, and had felt revolted when Tiger's tongue had touched his own. But he hadn't been able to resist that little bite, that one tiny little nip. And by then it was far, far too late. That desperate longing, that over-powering yearning for something that should have so disgusted him, raced through him, soaking every fibre of his being with all consuming blood lust.

He had stared for a moment into Tiger's horrified eyes, relishing his chance for revenge, and then, unable to hold back any longer, he had bitten Tiger. Instinctively he knew what to do, first, one small bite to get the blood flowing. He could feel toxins in this fangs just waiting to be injected, toxins that would immobilise Tiger's vocal cords, and, if he injected enough into him, paralyse him altogether. However, if he didn't then kill his victim, he knew that Tiger would become a Vampire too, and that cold and calculated predator's voice in his mind was telling him what a bad idea it was to create more competition for himself when there was only a limited blood supply nearby.

So, resisting the urge to inject venom into his victim, he quickly released his grip, and then bit again, deeper now, to anchor his teeth in place and prevent his victim from escaping too easily.

The blood felt hot, and unpleasantly stringy*** as it first made it's way down his throat. But then the unique components of Vampire saliva that stopped blood from clotting, and made the wound bleed quicker, kicked in and it didn't feel wrong at all. In fact, it felt oh so right. Alex could feel the strength that had so recently abandoned him, rushing back, and more besides. He knew that the more blood he consumed, the more his strength grew and the better his senses and reflexes would become.

Unlike when Alex had himself been bitten, Tiger didn't seem to be terrified and in pain and desperate to escape. In fact, judging by the moans, he appeared to be quite enjoying it.

It was a sound that Alex found rather disturbing, and one that managed to bring him back to himself. Uh. No. No way was he going to be involved in anything that made Tiger sound like _that._ Using all the willpower he had, and desperately fighting the urge to drain Tiger dry, Alex unclenched his jaw and wrenched himself away from the older man. He ended up on his back in the grass, panting to gain his breath back, and with his mouth covered in blood.

He felt...he felt strange. Alive. More alive than he had ever in his life. The blood sung through his veins and everything in the world suddenly felt and sounded and looked and smelt and tasted so much stronger, better, clearer than it had ever done before. It felt as though he had been living in a entrapping bubble all his life and finally escaped. He never wanted the feeling to stop. He wanted more blood.

The thought jolted him straight back into a sitting up position and he found himself looking at Tiger. He was were Alex left him, knelt under the tree, blood covering his neck and a strange look on his face. His eyes looked completely glazed over, as though Alex had sucked his soul out, not his blood. But there was a look of bliss there too, as though he was thinking back to the best moments of his life.

Alex's eyes fixed back on Tiger's neck and he clenched his fists together. He wanted to finish the job he had started. He had never wanted, no, needed something so much in his life. But he dragged his eyes away from the sight of blood and wrestled himself into standing up and turning away from the soldier. Alex's heart was beating madly in his chest and everywhere he looked seemed so much more in focus than it ever had before.

But he couldn't take any pleasure in his enhanced senses due to the weight of what he had done coming crashing over his head like a vengeful tsunami.

He had bitten someone. Given in and drank someone's blood. They would kill him now for sure. There was no way MI6 would allow him to live now that he had let _that _side of himself out. If Tiger told anyone, he was doomed.

Reluctantly he turned to face the soldier again, who didn't appear to have moved an inch since he last looked. Their eyes locked and Tiger appeared to try and say something, but all he managed was a wordless sound, devoid of meaning.

The urge to bite him again shot up through the teenager's spine. No, no, no, no. He mustn't. Couldn't. But if he killed him, there would be no one to give away his secret...

He bit back the slinking thought, actually accidentally biting the inside of his mouth with his sharpened teeth. He swallowed and tasted sweet, metallic blood. His and Tiger's as well.

There was only one thing he could think to do to prevent himself from murdering the man behind them. They might have failed him once, but still Alex ran to his backpack and, with trembling hands, managed to extricate a couple of tablets from their packaging. Quickly he shoved both into his mouth and, taking a swig of water, swallowed them down.

They were fast acting tablets, but every second that passed seemed almost a year as he sat hunched up next to his bag, praying that they would take effect.

Then Alex heard a sound behind him and turned round to see Tiger stagger to his feet. For a couple of seconds he looked drunk, then he managed to regain his balance and began to head in Alex's direction. The teenager watched him warily and also rose to his feet, and backed away a few steps. No way did he want Tiger any where near him. He needed more time to get over his bloodlust, and also had a feeling that Tiger might just want to kill him now.

The other man stopped a couple of metres away from him, and asked in a confused, hoarse voice, "What...what are you?"

"I..." what could he say? He couldn't just come out and say "I'm a vampire", but it was clearly far too late for him to just be able to shrug Tiger off completely. Instead he found himself stammering an apology, his words tripping over each other as his internal battle continued to rage. "I'm so. So so sorry. I-I didn't mean it. Please. It-. It was an accident. I didn't mean to. Oh God. I just couldn't help it."

But then he begun to feel angry.

"I told you to stop! I told you to leave me alone, to get away from me. But you wouldn't. You wouldn't stop. You wouldn't fucking stop and I told you to, but you didn't!"

"Cub" Tiger said, and Alex ceased his tirade. "Cub. Please" He took a step closer to Alex, and said in a voice thick with emotion. "Cub. Please. I don't know what the fuck that was..just- just do that again."

"What?" Alex replied, confused. Where was the fear, the horror, the hatred, that he had expected.

He took another step closer to him. "Please, Cub. That- I- I've never felt like that before. You've got to do it again."

Once again, he stepped closer to Alex. There was still a bit of a strangely glazed look in his eyes, as if he was under some sort of spell. But there was lust there too.

The teenager began to back away from him, away from the trees and into the clearing.

"No! No. Don't go, Cub. Come here. Come on. I'm not going to hurt you. Just do- do what ever you did again..." His eyes seemed to began to focus a little better on Alex and he appeared to notice the blood around his mouth for the first time.

"You bit me? Is that- was that what happened? I don't remember. I just- Please Cub. I need you. I need you so much right now."

"No, no, you don't," he replied, still backing away. The drugs seemed to be taking effect. His teeth were still far sharper than they should have been, his canines especially, but he felt weaker now, and the bloodlust seemed manageable at least.

Then Tiger began to get aggressive. "Don't make me hurt you, Cub. I could hurt you in ways you've never imagined. I could cause you so much pain... But I don't want to. I want to keep you safe and happy. If I have to hurt you though, I will, Cub."

"That doesn't even make sense!" Was all Alex managed to say in reply.

That made Tiger shout at him, "I don't care. Just get the fuck here now, Cub. Get here now."

He shook his head, and raised up his hands in front of him, in a calming motion. Tiger was getting awfully close to him and he found himself running out of room. For he had backed away to the cliff edge of the clearing, the one that overlooked the lake that the zip-wire crossed over, further upstream.

"Stop it. Just stop it Tiger. This is insane! Just leave me alone."

"No!" The older man snarled. "You will be mine, whether you like it or not! You will be mine!"

Alex managed to spit, "Paedophile! I'm fifteen for Gods sake, Tiger!"

Before the other man lunged at him.

Automatically, the teenage spy took the only exit left to him, and with as much strength as he could manage, threw himself backwards off the cliff edge.

"_I'm over it  
You see I'm falling in the vast abyss  
Clouded by memories of the past  
At last, I see_

I hear it fading  
I can't speak it  
Or else you will dig my grave  
We fear them finding  
Always whining  
Take my hand now  
Be alive" 

*** Feel Good INC. by Gorillaz. Planned on using this song in tnat piece all along, virtual cookies to those who know why! XD**

**** Hunter's Kiss by Rasputina**

***** Yep, apparently if you drink blood too slowly, it feel all nasty and stringy as it goes down your throat. Lovely!**

***** Forsaken by Disturbed**

**Hehe, not so much a cliff hanger as a cliff thrower. OK, so that jokes seriously sucked XD**

**Yeeep, so, there you go, Tiger finally laid down his lecherous cards and Alex certainly did not return the attention, well, not in the same way at least.**

**The next chapter is going to be shorter than this one, so, fingers crossed, shouldn't take me as long to finish as this one did DX**

**This story arc is drawing to a close now, in a couple more chapters. It should have been much longer than this though :( Tiger was supposed to attack Alex now, and then try again later, driving Alex to biting him then. Plus Alex was supposed to end up killing a deer before now, as a bit of forewarning about the tablets not living up to his expectations. But I simply haven't been able to include those things as, if I ever want to get this finished, I seriously need to speed things up **

**There's supposed to have been a bit more character development for a couple of other secondary characters too. I won't say what though, just in case I get chance to mentioned that stuff a bit in the next couple of chapter.**

**Sooooo, yeah. You probably hated that, and I'm really not keen on it in places, I gotta admit, but if you've got anything nice to say at all, a review would be nice XD**


	16. Knowledge is power

**Uh, well, as you may have noticed, it's been a little while since my last update. A very long little while. Very very long. **

**Umm...I know 'sorry' doesn't really cut it, but...sorry?**

**At least I **_**finally **_**did get around to updating! XD**

**A lot has changed since I last updated. Looking back on that AN, that must have been a little bit after my first set of exams last year. Well, I might have done terrible in those, but I did some retakes and revised my ass off for my final exams.**

**So, here I am at university now, and its pretty awesome, I tell yah!**

**To try and help bully me, uh, I mean, encourage me, to update sooner this time around, I've gone and created a tumblr blog called oncebittentwicethespy that's dedicated to the Alex Rider fandom. So feel free to come along and ask questions, to submit AR related stuff and to bug me about updating! XD**

**To make it easy to find (something you can do even if you don't have an account on Tumblr, by the way), I've written some kind of post and tagged it as 'OBTTS' and a few other things.**

**Disclaimer: Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope, I don't own anything to do with the rights of the Alex Rider series. I do own some books and write some fanfics though. :P**

**Warning: There is a small amount of violence and some swearing in this fic. Beware! Beware!**

**Recap: Damn, I basically need a recap for myself, let alone you guys, it's been that long since I last updated!**

**Tiger has finally made a move on Alex, and it hasn't gone well at all for him. Or for either of them for that matter, as Tiger now knows that Alex isn't quite the human being he claimed to be, or any kind of human being at all.**

**Oh, and last you saw, Alex Had just thrown himself off a cliff :)**

_Knowledge is Power_

The fall lasted only a few, horrible seconds before Alex hit the surface of the lake. His momentum and clothes dragged him down into the water and the shock of the sudden cold numbed all thought for a moment. Then panic and instinct kicked in and Alex fought his way back up. He burst out of the water and he took a huge gasp of air, shaking his head to get rid of the hair in his face. He glanced back up at the spot he'd just jumped off, for a second, then turned and started to head for the nearest shore.

Before he'd managed to swim more than a couple of strokes though, something small splashed into the water near him. _Damn! Is Tiger throwing rocks or something?_ Alex wondered. He looked around in time to see the soldier, far above him, hurl something else off the edge. For a moment he had no idea what it was, before suddenly realising it was his backpack. Just as it hit the surface of the lake, Alex launched himself after it and managed to grab it before it disappeared down into the depths of the lake.

The soaking wet backpack made it even harder to swim, and he almost ended up abandoning it, but he managed to make it to shore just before it came to that. Feeling exhausted, Alex dragged himself into the warmer shallows, and from there, on to dry land.

Once again he looked back around. Tiger was still standing up there, and though it was too far away for Alex to prove it, he knew that he was watching him.

Alex wanted to swear at him, to rant and rave and scream obscenities loud enough for him to hear. He was too tired though, much too tired, and was starting to feel pretty ill. All that blood and the tablets he'd ended up overdosing on were fighting it out inside him. The teenager stumbled several steps away from the lake edge and into the shelter of the adjacent wood. Once he was sure he was out of Tiger's view, he stopped fighting back his nausea and threw up on the ground. Leaning in against a tree with his head on his arm, Alex waited for the world to stop spinning. It took around ten minutes for him to feel well enough to head back, with squelching steps, to the lakeside. Alex made sure Tiger was nowhere to be seen, before doing his best to clean the blood off of himself in the sun-warmed shallows.

His situation was bad. Very bad. He knew that. Tiger knew what he was now, and if he told anybody else...well, they probably wouldn't believe him, but if MI6 found out anybody knew... They'd put him down like the animal he'd become.

So what should he do now? The only rational thing to do was to head back to camp, get properly cleaned up and dried, and then plan. Plan what to do with the rest of his life and how to extend it as much as he possibly could.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

"Where the hell have you been, Cub? For a nice little swim, hm? You're not a fish, Cub, why have you got yourself so bloody soaking wet?"

The Sargent had spotted him as soon as he'd managed to find his way back to the camp.

"Fell into a pond, did you, Cub?"

"Uh, I-"

"You did, didn't you?"

"N-"

"I think you did, Cub. I think your so bloody clumsy you managed to fall into a pond. How else do you explain all this, Cub?"

He waved a hand in Alex's general direction. Alex might have managed to get the blood off his face and neck, but he was still a bit muddy from the lake. The evening sun might have been warm, but he was still soaked through to the bone, along with his backpack.

"That's not quite w-"

Once again, the Sargent cut him off. He didn't want to hear the truth. To be honest, Alex wasn't about to give it to him either, but he didn't want everyone to think that he'd just managed to trip over into a _pond_ of all things. The Sargent just wanted to make fun of him in front of everyone else.

Talking about _everyone else..._

"Come on, Cub, let's go talk to the rest of K-Unit about your little adventure, and the consequences its going to have for them, ay?"

Giving Alex no chance for protest, he forced the teenager to follow him to K-Unit's cabin.

This was not going to be good. Not going to be good at all.

The Sargent threw open the door without knocking, and all four of the other members of Alex's unit looked up. Wolf was sitting on his bunk, polishing a pair of boots. Eagle was reading and smoking as usual. Osprey and Tiger were sitting together in a corner and glared at Alex the minute their eyes focused on him. He couldn't help but notice that Tiger was now wearing a clean shirt with the white of a bandage visible on his left shoulder and lower neck.

"'Ello men. Everybody's favourite little teenager here, has not only been gallivanting off into the countryside, despite not having been given leave to do so, but he's also managed to be such a clumsy little girl that he's gone and fallen into a pond or something."

The rest of the unit listened, frowning, waiting to see how this was going to effect them all. The Sargent wouldn't be talking so gleefully if it wasn't something that was going to make them all suffer.

"As you can see, he's managed to get himself rather damp. He needs hanging out to dry. Say, all night. Sadly we have no access to a clothes line. I believe standing with a rifle above his head should be close enough. To make sure the riffle doesn't end up below the top of his head though, I'm going to need a his bestest friends in the whole wide world to keep an eye on him. That would be you guys." Eagle groaned and Osprey immediately tried to argue a case against them getting punished for "Some stupid thing that little bastard did." The Sargent usually got on quite well with Osprey, the two of them practically being kindred souls. This time though, he wasn't making any exceptions. Suffering came before friendship, after all.

The four men were assigned a rota that split the night up between them. They were told that if any man spotted Cub lowering the rifle, that they could rely on their youngest team mate being punished for it, and them being rewarded for reporting 'yet another stupid failure' of Cub's. However, if the Sargent saw it happen himself and the K-Unit member currently on watch duty at the time didn't report it, they would be receive the same punishment as Cub. So that he could keep a look out on the unit, the Sargent made Alex stand in view of the porter-cabin that acted as his office.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

Eagle was assigned first watch. He sat with his back against the nearest cabin; one that was currently not being used. Unsurprisingly he spent most of the time smoking cigarettes and reading some tatty old paperback book. As usual, he also said very little to Alex. He wasn't much of a speaker. Alex did catch Eagle glancing up at him quite often though, with an unreadable expression on his face. He was probably just checking that Alex hadn't lowered the rifle.

It was hard work, bloody hard work, keeping that gun in the air. It wasn't an especially heavy one, but it didn't take long for his arms to really start to ache and for the rifle to begin to waver above his head.

He was cold too. The evenings were long and warm at this time of year, but it was growing dark now, and he still wasn't dry. The soft breeze he'd been enjoying earlier that day had grown in strength and sharpness, enough to make him shiver in his damp clothes.

Alex still felt rather ill as well, the fight going on inside him might have calmed down, but it had still left him feeling rather weak and sick. The back ache he'd being suffering from on-and-off since his transformation also began to kick in. On top of that, he hadn't eaten for quite some time, and had earlier thrown up everything he'd had for lunch. And later... Alex's shudder wasn't from the cold this time, it was from revulsion. He'd bitten someone. Bitten _Tiger._ Tiger might be a monster, a disgusting, deprived monster, but Alex was too. He hated himself for that.

Sometime very late that evening, Alex guessed it was probably some time after eleven, the Sargent came to check up on him. Alex forced his aching arms into the air, forced them to hold the rifle up higher. He wasn't sure how much longer he could take of this. After a minute or two of watching him, the Sargent spoke briefly to Eagle and then left. He didn't go back to his office though, but headed off in the direction of his sleeping quarters. As he went, he called back a promise to check up on him later, but now Alex knew that he didn't have to be constantly in fear of the Sargent watching him. He gave it a few more minutes, to double check he wasn't coming straight back, then, slowly, began to lower his arms, groaning from the stiffness in his muscles.

Eagle looked up at him, a typically blank look on his suntanned face. Alex hesitated. Eagle wouldn't grass on him, would he? He didn't think so, but he wasn't sure. After a second, Eagle smiled slightly and made a small shrugging gesture with his shoulders, before returning to his book. Alex took the opportunity to stretch his arms out as best as he could, not daring to actually put the rifle down in case someone came along.

About twenty minutes later, Alex heard a small hissing noise from Eagle, and realised he could hear approaching footsteps. He quickly raised the rifle above his head, but not all the way. He didn't want it to be obvious that Eagle had allowed him to have a rest.

His heart sank when he saw who it was. Osprey, looking as happy to see Cub as ever.

The two soldiers talked quietly for a moment or two, both glancing around at Alex every now then. Then Eagle left and Osprey took his place, leaning against the wall of the empty cabin.

Alex avoided looking at him, but he could feel Osprey glaring at him all the same. Alex had to be very careful not to allow the rifle drop below his head while Osprey was the one watching him. He'd report him for it in an instance, and take a lot of pleasure in doing so. Hell, if the Sargent came to check on him while to was still on guard, Alex was sure he'd claim to have seen the teenager drop the rifle or something, even if it was a complete lie. He was just that kind of lovely person.

Nothing happened apart from Alex's arms and back aching again, for about two hours. All the while, Osprey kept glancing up at Alex, his jaw locked and his eyes glaring. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind. Then Osprey suddenly shifted his weight off of the wall, a look of determination on his face, and walked up to Alex. There was aggression in his eyes. More than usual. The teenager looked back at him warily.

Osprey drew himself up to his full height, staring down his nose at the youngest member of his unit. Then, without pausing, he gave Alex a short, sharp punch to the stomach.

The spy gasped and couldn't stop himself from doubling over slightly. He just about managed to keep the rifle above his head. By the looks of things though, the Sargent's punishments were currently the least of his worries.

"What. The fuck. Are you, Cub?" He spat, his sentence sounding fractured from anger and hatred.

"What?" Alex replied weakly as he tried to straighten himself back upright. Had Tiger told Osprey everything? Had he really gone charging off to tell him about Cub biting him so quickly? Surely Osprey would just think Tiger was mistaken, or telling lies, or something?

"You know what I'm talking about, you creepy, fucking, little freak."

Oh dear, maybe not... The two of them must be seriously good friends for Osprey to have accepted such an odd story. Or maybe he didn't believe him and just wanted another reason to hate and hurt Alex?

Either way, it didn't look as though things were going to go well for the teenager.

As Tiger grabbed hold of his jaw, the man's rough nails digging into his skin, Alex wondered if Osprey knew the whole story, knew what Tiger had been trying to do. He couldn't imagine someone so quick to hate and bigotry as this would be at all accepting of someone who was homosexual, but what if...what if he was a sexual predator too? It was not a cheering thought. Especially not with Osprey holding onto his jaw so tightly that Alex feared he was about to draw blood with his nails.

He forced Alex to look straight at him, his eyes flicking between Alex's own as though looking for something. Of course. The teenager knew that the Vampirism seemed to have a strange effect on his eye colour at times. Was Osprey looking for that?

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Cub?" He muttered, more to himself then the person in front of him.

"Nothings wrong with me... Apart from the fact some creeps got hold of my face." He replied.

Immediately Osprey's glare got stronger than ever, along with his grip. Alex flinched as a nail punctured through his skin. Using his free hand, Osprey punched him in the stomach again. Alex's reaction was to bring the rifle down on Osprey's head. He didn't hit him hard, his arms having been fairly low down already, but it still made Osprey gasp. Unfortunately it also made him shove Alex's head back violently. He pushed hard enough for the teenager to fall backwards. Alex manage to throw his aching arms out to the side to catch his fall, but the rifle went flying out of his hands.

He twisted around and made a grab for it, but Osprey trod down on his arm and made to kick him in the head. Alex barely manage to move away in time, ripping his arm out from under Osprey's boot in order to avoid the blow.

He quickly scrambled to his feet and stood a short distance away from Osprey, watching him warily, while massaging the arm that had been stamped on. Thankfully, the older man hadn't done it hard enough to break anything.

The two of them stood, watching each other for a moment, both wondering what the other was going to do next. Noticing he was right next to the rifle, Osprey grabbed it off the ground and aimed it at Alex, who rolled his eyes.

"It's not loaded, idiot."

The soldier's lips twisted into a snarl, and repositioned his hold on the gun so he could hold it like a club.

"Wait. So. You're going to beat me to death with a rifle?" Alex asked incredulously. As he spoke, he absent-mindedly rubbed the back of one hand against a sore patch on his jaw.

"Maybe." Osprey growled, taking a step towards Alex.

This was insane. Actually, it was looking more and more like Osprey honestly _was_ insane. The teenager made an attempt at pointing out to Osprey what an idiot he was being, all the same. "What. Seriously? Damn, Osprey! What the hell are you thinking? I'm a fifteen years old kid you barely even know, for Christ's sake, and you're going to murder me here, while the rest of the unit knows you're the one watching me? And for what? I haven't done anything to you, I didn't ask to come here, hell, I seriously wish I was anywhere but here! I-"

He stopped. There was blood on the back of his hand, from his neck. He was bleeding.

Osprey ignored his words and took another step forward. What he didn't ignore was sudden movement behind him. He whipped around, the rifle still held like a club in his hands. He was too slow to react in a way which would allow him to make the scene look any better than it was, and if it had been pretty much anybody else in the world who had appeared, the situation would have panned out much differently. But it wasn't the Sargent checking up on him again, wasn't Wolf coming to relieve Osprey from watch duty, or any random other soldier who had heard their scuffle. No. It was Tiger. Of course it was Tiger who was next on the rota. Some times Lady Luck could be a real bitch to Alex Rider.

"Oh. Hello, Tiger." Osprey lowered the gun. Tiger gave him a surprised, but also slightly amused look.

"You weren't trying to kill him, were you? You know I wouldn't want that."

Osprey grumbled something in reply as his friend walked up to join him.

"Oh dear, Cub, what's the Sargent going to say when we tell him about this?" He pointed towards the gun Osprey was holding.

"What's he going to say when I tell him you're a paedophile?"

Tiger gave him a condescending look.

"That you're a lying little prick. No one would believe you."

His face changed them, became odd, unreadable. Alex knew he'd spotted the small smear of blood in the corner of his jaw.

What would Tiger be feeling now? Fear? Anger? Hatred? ...Lust?

"Osprey. I can prove it. I can prove it to you."

"What?" Osprey seemed a bit confused.

"I can prove that he's a monster. Look there's blood."

He took a step towards Alex, who threw his hands up in the air and said, "Yes. There's blood. So what? I'm not a monster. I don't know what kind of drugs you're on, Tiger, but I'm not the monster here."

It was a lie of course, and both of them knew it. Even after all the blood and tablets and nausea and throwing up earlier that evening, even the sight of his own blood had been enough to start his heart pounding. He could swear he could hear Tiger's and Osprey's heart beats from where they were standing as well. Now the focus had been brought back to the blood, he could hear the sound even clearer. And clearer and clearer and clearer. The sound of their blood pumping through their veins rushed through him, every pulse of their separate hearts was like a firework going off in his mind... He shook his head violently, dragging himself away from his obsessed thoughts.

"Something wrong, Cub?" Tiger asked with a grim, knowing smile.

"Well, kind of, yeah, since I seem to have found myself at a Psychos Anonymous meeting."

Osprey took another threatening step towards him. Alex took a step back in turn.

Things looked as though they were about to turn nasty; maybe he should just make a run for it. But he had nowhere to go, and if he did run away for real, MI6 would be notified immediately and start hunting him down. Hiding until morning might be viable though. Since things had gone beyond what ever petty punishment the Sargent could deal out for him failing, getting away from Tiger and Osprey was now his first priority. Though the camp was weakly lit (though not enough to ruin anybody's night vision, in case of an attack), if they tried to pursue him through the woods to his right, they'd soon lose track of him. He'd have a miserable night, but would probably actually have a better nights sleep then if he'd spent the whole time with a rifle above his head, or at the hands of these creeps.

Osprey took another step towards him, and so did Tiger.

"Look, Cub, we aren't going to hurt you, we just want to ask you a few questions." He said.

Alex made a scoffing noise, which Tiger ignored as he moved to stand beside Osprey.

"Just tell me Cub. Just tell me, am I going to become...like you now?"

"What?" The teenager replied, confused. "I'm sorry, there's nothing you could ever do to be as cool as me."

Tiger didn't seem to find his reply very amusing. He screwed up his hands into fists, and his face into an angry expression.

"Stop fucking around, Cub. You know what I mean. You...bit me. Your eyes went all, all, creepy, and your teeth, they... You are one, aren't you? A vampire. A real, fucking, vampire. They exist, don't they? And you're one, and you bit me." He spat the words out, seeming to struggle with them, and with his own disbelief. But he knew what he'd seen. He knew what had happened to him. Even if a million people told him it was impossible, he would still know it to be true. It kind of scared him.

Alex was feeling frightened now too. Tiger knew. Tiger _knew. _Still, he wasn't about to give up.

"I don't know what the hell you are going about. You obviously need mental help. Next you are going to be saying Wolf's a the Tooth-fairy, or something."

Osprey took yet another step forward. They were getting a little close for comfort. Alex couldn't help glance over his shoulders. If he made a run for it in that direction, he'd just end up running through the part of the camp that was only used during the day, the mess hall, Sargent's office, and the like. His only option really as looking like the forested area off to his right.

His eyes fixed back intently on Tiger, though, when he saw a glint of metal. Slowly, the soldier held up a silver pocket knife with one hand, and pulled the blade out of its recess with the other. There was a moment when nobody moved at all. Alex knew what Tiger was about to do. Then he did it, he repositioned the knife over his forearm, and, without flinching, slowly dragged the blade across his skin. Alex's breath caught in the back of his throat. He couldn't help but stare at Tiger's arm. Blood. There was blood there. Warm, thick blood, welled up from the cut and starting to slide downwards. Little beads of it began to collect at the bottom and hang there for a moment or two, before becoming too heavy and falling as red droplets onto the ground below.

Osprey eyed his friend warily, thinking that he had perhaps taken this a little too far. OK, so he knew Tiger had a healthy sadistic streak, and could sometimes be a bit of a masochist, in certain situations... But this... This was weird even for him. Osprey noticed movement in his peripheral vision and glanced up to see Cub take one unsteady step towards them, and then another. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his side, and he seemed to be shaking. His eyes looked weird too. They were fixed on the arm Tiger held out, and had an odd look to them. Sort of dead and glassy and obsessed and fixated all at the same time. Their colour too, seemed off. Osprey had never really paid much attention to them, and why should he have done? He didn't give a fuck what colour Cub's eyes were. But now, they definitely didn't look normal. It might have just been the dim lighting, but they looked black, with little flashes of what could have been red in them, which showed up whenever he moved. Which he did. Closer and closer, each shuddering step seeming like a complex, internal struggle. Which it was.

Tiger started to get a little worried too, and took a couple of small steps back. He was still holding the knife, but it was angled away from himself, and towards Alex.

"Look, look! I told you! Help me get him into that empty cabin. Then I can show you. Then I can prove to you he's a real freak." Osprey nodded vaguely and glanced around to check how far behind them the cabin was.

With a nervousness that made both of them angry at themselves, the soldiers began to approach Cub again. His gaze flickered away from Tiger's arm, to eye them both up, and his lips pulled back into a soundless snarl that exposed his teeth. Osprey opened his mouth in shock a couple of times, trying to comment on what he'd just seen, but all he could manage was a quiet, strangled, "Holy fuck."

"See! See! I told you, I told you!" Tiger hissed with a level of excitement that seemed to border on insanity. "Now help me get him into the cabin."

"Why? Why the hell would we want to get into a confined space with this thing?"

"It's still Cub. He's still just a teenager." He flicked the pocket knife closed and tucked it into an inside pocket. He wanted both hands free for trying to get hold of Cub, but wanted the blade close, just in case. "Just hit him over the head with that rifle if you have to."

Osprey had forgotten about the gun in his hands, and quickly swung it round to face Cub, his fingers on the trigger, before remembering it wasn't loaded, and moving it so he could hold it like a club again.

Tiger took another step towards Cub, now almost close enough to touch him.

"Come on Cubby, come on my little freak. You want some blood, don't you?" He took another step closer, feeling more and more nervous as the distance between them decreased. Osprey followed, behind him and to the side, the rifle held ready to be brought crashing down onto the teenager's skull if he made a wrong move.

"Good Cub, good boy. Don't want anybody getting hurt again do we?" He seemed to think that talking to Alex like he was some kind of dangerous animal would somehow help the situation.

The teenager was shaking and twitching all over; his dark eyes flickered all over the place. Alex knew he was in danger, and that he was a danger to the two soldiers in front of him too. He desperately wanted to just get out of there, it run and run and never look back, but he couldn't. There was blood. So close. So close. And he was so hungry and desperate. He felt like a drug addict; all he wanted was a fix. All he could think of was blood. But the effects of bloodlust on a vampire, especially such a newly sired one, were far worse than that of the very strongest of drug addictions.

He was in danger though. He knew he was too weak to fight both of them off at the same time. It was agonising knowing that if only he could drink some blood, he would probably be able to kill them both single-handedly, if he wanted. At the moment all he wanted was blood though. But, no, he wanted to stay safe as well. Self preservation and common sense were Alex's only current weapons against the vampirism. An internal war raged as he thought to gain control over his body again.

Then Tiger grabbed hold of one of Alex's wrists with his uninjured arm and made to pull it behind his back. In that second, the instinct that years of martial arts had driven into him, kicked in and the part of him who was still human, still Alex, snapped into action. He twisted his body around to avoid the arm lock and used the momentum to punch at Tiger, catching him in the neck. The soldier let go of him and stumbled backwards, just as Osprey lunged at Alex with the butt of the rifle. The teenager tried to duck out of the way, but the gun still hit him a glancing blow across the back of his shoulders. The motion sent him crashing head first towards the ground, but he managed to turn the fall into a a rather poorly executed roll at the last second. Though it stopped him from getting serious head injuries, he wasn't able to use the momentum correctly to pull himself straight to his feet. Quickly, he scrambled to stand up. He had to get up and away before Osprey tried to hit him again. He has barely managed to get himself upright before the soldier swung at him once more. He only just missed, but then Alex was off, sprinting towards the forest.

Osprey ran after him straight away, and Tiger came after him a few seconds later. Alex had had an exhausting day, little sleep and no food for several hours, but fear and desperation gave him speed. The other two men were in better condition, but neither were as fast runners as Alex.

The area they were chasing him through was useless for losing people in though, it was a part of the woods that men tramped through everyday on exercises. Alex would have to keep going into the denser, less well trodden areas if he wanted to lose them.

…~*AR-OBTS*~…

It was just as he found himself really starting to slow down that the teenager realised his pursuers were now quite a distance behind him. He forced himself to keep going on, despite his burning lungs, aching muscles and increasing light-headedness. It wasn't enough just to get out of sight of them. He had to get far away enough that he could hide without them knowing which way he went. There was also the issue of sound; crashing through a wooded area with branches hitting you and twigs cracking beneath your feet wasn't exactly the quietest way to travel.

There soon came a point when Alex simply couldn't keep running any more. He could still hear Tiger and Osprey, but they seemed quite far away. Gasping for air and with a sharp stitch in his side, Alex decided to keep going, but to walk as quietly as he could. It wasn't easy, twigs still snapped with every other step, but he did his best to try and break as few as he could. Being the middle of summer, the night wasn't as dark as it could have been, but it was still hard to see where he was going.

Every now and then, a sudden silence would descend as Tiger and Osprey paused to try and listen out for the teenager. Alex would always freeze as soon as he noticed the stillness, and pray that no roosting birds, woken up by his movement, would pick that moment to burst up out of the trees with a shrill warning call.

Eventually the sounds of pursuit disappeared. Alex kept thinking he could hear them again, but each time it proved to just be an animal moving about in the undergrowth or branches knocking against each other in the light night time breeze. The sounds kept him from settling though.

Alex thought his best bet was to head back towards camp, where Tiger and Osprey would be unable to try anything due to the presence of other people. As long as he was never alone with either of them, he should be all right, right? It was a weak hope. Everything was falling apart and Alex knew it. He was half tempted to just run off now, run off and try and... Then what? He had no supplies of any kind, nothing but the clothes he was standing in. He had to go back to camp.

By the time he drew close enough again to make out the shapes of the buildings, it was early morning. Wolf, who would have been the person on guard duty next, would know he'd gone missing, either from Osprey and Tiger, or from simply turning up at the right spot and finding him gone. Alex desperately wanted to drop onto his bunk and go to sleep, but he had a feeling that if he turned up now and woke any of the members of K-Unit up, they would force him to go back to holding the rifle above his head. Where ever the rifle was, that is. And he really didn't want to risk being alone with either of the men who knew what he was now. Or alone with anybody, for that matter. His exhaustion was just making his hunger for blood more prominent. He didn't want to risk exposing himself to Wolf or Eagle, and didn't want to risk hurting them either.

Reluctantly, he decided the best thing he could do right now was curl up out of sight under a tree and try and get a couple of hours sleep, away from his unit and any other soldiers.

So, hungry, thirsty, incredibly tired and aching all over, Alex painfully lowered himself to the ground and, tucking up his legs and wrapping his arms around them, leant back against a large tree trunk. It wasn't easy getting to sleep, especially since his shoulders and back ached horribly. _Being strapped down onto a metal table for days and being hit over the shoulders with a gun will do that to you, _Alex thought to himself, as everything slowly faded away and he finally fell asleep.

**Eck. Well, there you go. I'm sorry if there are loads of mistakes, it's just gone past half three in the morning and I've only just finished, and I'm really tired and I just wanted to get this chapter up so it hasn't been beta read. So, yeah, sorry about any stupid switches in tenses and stuff, my brain doesn't function very well at this kind of time.**

**Sorry again for the long long ling wait. It probably would have been longer if it wasn't for messages from Silver Rook on FF and Pingnova on Tumblr. People reminding me this fic exists certainly helps get my butt into gear when it comes to updates XD**

**The next chapter is a very big one. Something that's been hinted at for ages will happen. The hinting was quite subtle, but the 'something' is not. There's a good chance some people might dislike it, and for that I apologise in advance. It's something I've had planned since the beginning, and though I'm not so keen on it myself any more, I've decided to stay true to my original plans. It's probably none of the things that have popped into your head, so don;t worry. It's probably going to be one of those things that you read and are like "Oh. Right, uh didn't see that coming, I guess."**

**I just hope it doesn't take me this long to get the next chapter written up XD**

**So, uh, yes, that's me done for another chapter. Again, sorry for, well, everything. And there's that Tumblr thing as well but it's not important so it doesn't really matter and my main fandom over there is currently in melt down because of 'Fire Fire' and if you understand what that means we can probably be best friends forever and I'm rambling now so I'm gonna shut up. **

**Goodbye friends, I am gone.**


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